HORI AS JOKER

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 117, 13 November 1926, Page 21

HORI AS JOKER

AND ME. LAWLOR AS PRODUCER.

"Maori Tales." Written or collected by Pat Lawlpr. Wellington: New Century Press.

There are enough Maori tales to make a booklet, and Mr. Lawlor is a competent collector, but, as might be expected, the quality of the tales is somewhat uneven. Here are two from the first thirty pages:-—

"Unfair competition.—The scene was a railway station in the King Country. A train pulled in and a Maori wahine, dressed in the gayest of clothing, stepped perkily from a carriage, and was greeted by a sister Native, who was also in festive attire. Contrary to the usual custom, they proceeded to kiss each other in the European fashion. Haere, who was supporting,tho Government institution by a graceful attitude against a post, turned to Turi and said, 'Dcre yer sre, Turi. Two wahines doin' te one man's work.' "

"Missing.—Hori was having trouble with .his new and glittering roadster, so a mechanic came out from town, and *the pair of them drove along the dusty road near tho pa. 'The engine's missing,' said the mechanic. Hori jumped out and lifted the bonnet with vast indignation. 'No fear, poss. '• Engine there, orritc. You guess again.''".

While this collection of talcs cannot exactly be regarded as a contribution to Maori ethnography, it will.no doubt be appreciated by many, and a good deal of possible criticism has been disarmed or met half-way in a very clever introduction by Mr. Dick Harris. "It is possible,'of course," writes the discreet Mr. Harris, "that some few of these ,ienls are not wholly of Maori origin—that some may have been 'wished' on the bland, and not very unsophisticated Hori, even as Irishmen are. considered to have a- prescriptive right to all 'bulls' over-uttered, and all dull stories (see any more or less recent volume of fashionable reminiscences) are fathered on eminent and decoded pews and statesmen of the later . Vict'ori"ri era. Tjct the reader..bo assured, howver, that by far the greater number of these specimens of wit and humour arc genuinely the product of that Maori mentality so delightfully compounded of guile and simplicity."