MAORI MOURNERS.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXI, Issue 2721, 21 November 1910, Page 3

MAORI MOURNERS.

A writer in the Southern Cross log, describing the manner in which the

natives on the island : of Ticopea wail. for the dead, says :—" The near rela-

tives sit close round the corpse. The body, which is dressed in a new girdle of cloth of beaten bark, dyed a beautiful orange colour, is decorated with a necklace pt leaves and laid in the centre of the floor upon a large new mat and a new blanket, of bark-cloth, which afterwards form the shroud. The head is pillowed upon some fresh - gathered strong scented leaves, and the breast and head are smeared thick with blood red tumeric, a pigment, the use ot which is more or less sacred and ritualistic. The knees are raised, so that the legs are crooked, this being the attitude in which the corpse is wound up and

buried. As the relatives sit near the

body, they will, one by one, from time

to time, come shuffling forward on their knees, and. leaning over it will lay their cheek beside the cheek or iorehead of the dead, and as they do they will'tear with their nails the flesh of their own cheeks just beside the corners of the mouth till the blood trickles down upon theblood red tumeric-smeared face of the dead. The cold reserved AngloSaxon so shy of showing publicly his' grief, looks off with feelings of amazement and infinite pity in his heart at this extremity of.sorrow." '