“Ka mate, Ka mate!”

No chant in the Maori tongue is more often sung—or murdered when the pakeha attempts it—than the song of welcome and peacemaking which begins “Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora!” (“It is death, it is death!—no, it is life, it is life!”). It was shouted with great gusto in the Maori greeting to the Duke of Gloucester at Rotorua. It is one of the oft-quoted specimens of native song-making given in a recently published book, “Maori Music, with its Polynesian Background,” in which its origin is attributed to the great warrior Te Rauparaha, on an occasion when he was hiding from his enemies. There is no good Maori authority for this story.

The fact is that “Ka mate, ka mate,” and the rest of it is a very old chant, long antedating Te Rauparaha's period. It goes back several centuries, and it is only the concluding portion of an ancient song of reunion and felicitation, often chanted at occasions of peace-making and such gatherings as marriage feasts. The song, as it is popularly given to-day, is six or seven lines from the whole chant, which is much longer. If Te Rauparaha used it, he was quoting this fitting final bit; he was not the composer thereof. I have the complete chant, as given me by a chief and tohunga of the old generation many years ago. However, the last rhythmic chorus is about as much as the pakeha and the modern Maori can manage, and it certainly makes a good rousing haka shout, which strangers are apt to imagine must be something exceedingly belligerent and savage.