THE MOURNER'S TREE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 137, 11 June 1932, Page 8

THE MOURNER'S TREE.

The "Star" picture of the kawakawa foliage, f'roin a painting exhibited in the Auckland War Memorial Museum, calls up memories and poetic legends. The leaves of this small tree —it ranges from ten to twenty feet or so in height—are -for some reason peculiarly sabred in old Maori usage. They are not only a symbol of mourning for the dead, like the koromiko or veronica— and now the pakeha'e weeping willow. Twigs and leaves of kawakawa are used by the tohunga Maori who performs the ceremony of removing the spell of tapu from new carved houses. The Urewera people take the rata as their ceremonial tree; its foliage is called "the loin mat of TaneMalnitu," the deity of the forests, and rata branchlets are used by the prie.st in the houseopening ritual. Kawakawa, however, is the ehrub resorted to by most of the other tribes when the olden ways are revived at such gatherings. The leaves are set round the carved post supporting the front end of the ridge pole, and the conductor of the ceremonies taps each carved slab and post in the interior of the building as ho "joes round reciting his service. In spite of modern notions, the good old ways are preserved in some districts, and the rhythmic karakia centuries old are well remembered.

There are beauty and poetry in ihe mourning observances with which the kawakawa is associated. The people at a tangi gathering where the old cuetoms are followed twine sprigs of it aronnd their heads, a=; they make lament for the dead. The koromiko is often used in the Waikato, where women wreathe their heads with masses of the vivid green leaf ace. The kawakawa, a duller green in hue. is seen worn at funerals in most native bush districts. In Taranaki there is a song in praise of the beauty of Mount Egmont, which likens the cloud that often wreathes the upper part of the snowy peak to a tipare, or head-circlet, of kawakawa leaves, an emblem of sorrow for the dead. The sight of this rounded cloud clinginsr to the tip of Taranaki —the old settlers have been heard to call it Egmont's tam-o'-shanter—often sets the older women of the plains settlement/ 3 croonin? the pliant for the mountain's "tipare kawakawa," which brings up many a sorrowful memory.

Tiankawa, the "Maori name of Cook Strait, embodies a tradition of old. the mourning observances for a certain chief of several centuries ago who was drowned in a canoe disaster in the strait. At the tangihanga, or gathering of lamentation, the people twined their heads with raukawakawa, the leavee of the mourner's tree.

It may be that there is a divj memory in the Maori regard for this shrub of the important place which the "kava," or " 'ava," holds among the Polynesian islanders. This Kc.v Zealand pepper tree, as it has been called, is closely allied to the plant whose roots are grated for the kava drink of Samoa and other islands. There is much virtue medicinally in the gingery South Sea root, and there may be some similar quality in our Piper excelsuni. Its leaves, at any rate, are used as a Maori remedy; a hot infusion is a medicine for colds. Will someone now experiment with its roots for a possible new beverage? —J.C.