The Maori Whare

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 32 (Supplement)

The Maori Whare

(Continued from Page 18.)

with a roof of split shingles. A neat litile church originally, no doubt, but now neglected and forlorn. The porch door lay open. Wet leaves had drifted in and strewed the floor. A window was broken. Quite a sound building for all its forlorn and intended appearance. It faced the carved front meeting house across the brier-grown marae. The two buildings seemed communing with each other, and inquiring "'Will they no" come back again V The Silent Hall. This hall of the community is well built, like the church. But one of the "amo-maihi," the carved slab uprights

at each side of the porch front, against the massive barge-boards, or "maihi." has been knocked aside by a falling tree. There is some artistic decorations in the porch and house, and there is a feature seen ii. very few Maori buildings, a "pihanga." or roof-window as a smoke-vent. It is cut in the slanting ceiling on the left hand as one enters.

The beautiful wooded mountain Pihanga, at the south side of Lake Taupo, was so named of old, the Maoris say, because the shape and situation of its extinct crater .resembled a roof-window. So this pihanga is a verv ancient feature o' tbe Maori whare seen in such a pi actas tli is. The Tribe Moves On. All kinds of tales had accumulated about this deserted village. We found, after exploring it everywhere, and finding a numl>er of overgrown sma!" whares and old cultivations among the trees, that the former inhabitants were not very far away. They had moved a little further to the north to

near a sawmill where most of them were employed.

There had been a death in the kainga, and the report grew that a figure in white had been seen sitting in the porch at midnight. A figure 5 , too, had been seen at the church, or flitting silently across the marae. So reported a belated Maori who • took the usual road through the village between church and whare. on his way home from the large village of Oruanui, a few miles nearer Taupo. Never after that would any of the former inhabitants venture through .Maroa-nui, even in the day time, if alone. They prefer to go round by tlie main road —there are no ghosts along tlie broad highway where the motor cars roll swiftly at all hours.

It was a pity to see sticli a once comfortable Maori hamlet lie so deserted. One explanation of its solitude i<s that it i« too far away from the sawmill for the people. That, of oourse seems a sound reason; nevertheless, it i* not all. Tapu is there, and the tale of tapu grows with the years.