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Greymouth Evening Star, 27 June 1930, Page 8

“Waiata Maori” writes: —One frequently 8 hears the expression, “Maori music,” meaning that it really . is Maori music as distinct from English, just as we talk about Russian music. The thing most people call Maori music is really music sung by Maoris. The real Maori would not interest any but musicians and people who study folk lore’ The last time I heard Maori music was in the picturesque little river stronghold of Parinui, on the Wanganui. An old tohunga-look-ing chap was sitting on the sunny side of a whare crooning away at a ngeri (what we call a chant), goodness knows how many generations old. Maori music has only four notes, so there is not much variety about the melody, but it is very soothing. At the end of each verse the last note ends in a sort of long emission of the breath, which reminds one of the way an Arab devotee pumps out the word “Alla-a-a-h!” in the peculiar gesticulatory religious ceremony called a “zikr.” Maori music is written —or rather sung, for it was never reduced to notation—in quarter tones, and that is why it cannot be play.ed on a piano. The airs that many people insist on calling Maori music are really pakeha melodies with Maori words. For instance, a popular Rotorua “Maori song” is really “Little Brown Jug.” Many of the Maori songs were originally “himene (hymns), and that is why some of the pretty melodies sung by the poi girls sound so reminiscent.

The very old custom of sewing money into the seams -of their garments is still a habit with some people, who, having collected their savings in small sums, think that it is the safest place to keep it-. In some of the larger old people’s homes in the Dominion, and in many of' the hospitals, too, it is astonishing how sums sometimes amounting to hundreds of pounds are found in garments which have been cast off and put away. Recently an old coat was found in an old house, where the occupant had just died. The garment was so oldfashioned and green with age that it was decided to destroy it. After examining all the pockets, it was just

by chance that an observant relative found securities that amounted to over three figures, in the lining below the inside breast pocket. ®Ht was a lucky discovery, as in five minutes the flames would have claimed the hoard. A week or two before £l4O was discovered in the sole of a boot under a loose piece of leather. A drainer mending a broken sewer not long ago dug up an old iron pot, which contained securities, and was readily claimed by the owner when he came home, never dreaming that that part of his garden would ever be disturbed.

“He is always being arrested for drunkenness,” declared a woman at the Police Court, Auckland, applying 'for a prohibition order against her husband. The woman, who was septirated from her husband, complained that, owing to his drinking habits, he never had enough money to keep up the payments on his maintenance order. “What do you mean—always being arrested?” asked defendant. The wife: Well, very often. Defendant '(bitterly): I was drunk the day I was married. It is a great pity I was not arrested in time that day.