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Otago Witness, Issue 4085, 28 June 1932, Page 26

In Taranaki there is a song in praise of the beauty of Mount Egmont (relates an exchange), which likens the cloud that often wreathes the upper part of the snowy peak to a tipare, or headcirclet, of kawakawa leaves, an emblem of sorrow for the dead. The sight of this rounded cloud clinging to the tip of Taranaki—the old settlers have been beard to call it Egmont’s tam-o’-shanter—often seta the older women of the plains settlements crooning the chant for the mountain’s “ tipare Kawakawa,” which brings up many a sorrowful memory. Raukawa, 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 leaves of the mourners’ tree.