WHAT TIMARU IS READING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21280, 25 February 1939, Page 12

WHAT TIMARU IS READING

MAORI LORE IN LITERATURE HOMELIFE IN YORKSHIRE (Specially written for “The Titnaru Herald by A. K. Elliot) “The Children of Tane” by Mona Gordon is an interesting contribution to New Zealand literature. “Long before the Maoris set forth on their migration from mythical Hawaiki to give the picturesque name of Aotea-roa (the Long Bright Land) to the high coast of New Zealand looming white in the summer dawn, and while yet the little dark-skinned Moriori crept about in awe among its green mystery, a great primeval forest stretched from the North Cape to the Bluff. Afar in the remote fastnesses of the Southern Hemisphere, in a long, narrow land, sea-girt, mountain-ribbed, river-meshed rising along its backbone to ten, eleven, and twelve thousand feet into everlasting snow the forest plunged in a glory of green over precipices, gullies and valleys, till the sea quenched its tumultuous career. A great cataclysm had come and shattered the Southern Continent, leaving Aotea-roa as a long isolated outcrop, alone w’ith its great upheaved mountains, its slowmoving glaciers, and these immense forest solitudes broken only by the songs and the cries of birds.” This is the first paragraph of a most delightful book on the birds of New Zealand, “The Children of Tane.” The book is grouped in sections—Birds in MaoriLore and Bird Literature—Bird Sanctuaries. There is a lovely chapter on “The New Zealand Dawn Song—Mara o Tane,” in which this praise is given to our New Zealand birds—“ Although the morning chorus of bird song has inspired praise and poetry in many parts of the world, probably it has never been equalled by such music as rang from the dense forests of the old land of Aotea-roa in the days before white settlement began.” Alas, such splendid concerts are not now as plentiful as of yore, owing to imported pests and the loss of forests, but still in the far forests can be heard that joyous chime of bell-birds —far-famed in Cook’s story of his men awakening to the chorus of bell-birds, but, as the author says, “What Elsdon Best so feeling wrote of the dawn song in New Zealand at the beginning of the century is even more true to-day: ‘The melodious clamour of the Mara o Tane is no longer heard in our forests when Tane himself appears in the reddened east, and the forest of Tane has largely disappeared, torn from the breast of Papa the Earth Mother by an intrusive and utilitarian people.’ ” Life in England The new book “Winifred Holtby As I Knew Her,” by Evelyne White, is most interesting for those who enjoyed “South Riding” and “Letters to a Friend,” this bbok will be much appreciated. Mrs White tells the story of Winifred Holty’s life from her childhood to her days at Oxford, her war experiences—her years of journalism, and the writing of her novels—of which “South Riding” is the best-loved of all her books. As the author says, “Winifred Holtby’s last novel, published in the year following her death, was her best. In it she came to the fullness of her powers, and all the careful work of years blossomed into that great book, “South Riding,” which bears the beautiful and eminently suitable sub-title, “An English Landscape.” Beneath the rich variation of the countryside she knew so well, she perceived a change, amazing and gigantic, and one which was to affect every one, highly or lowly placed, richly endowed or pauper, woman as well as man. She saw, not only a countryside separated by walls or dykes, intersected by canals, with here some large houses and there clusters of small ones. No, she saw beneath the surface; she perceived the gradual growth of the work of democracy; she realised that a vast machine had begun to operate which would eventually work for the good of the greatest number.” Evelyne White’s description of Winifred Holtby’s home country is beautiful, and one can realise how Winifred Holtby must have loved the Ridings of Yorkshire —“When dawn is breaking over Britain, the East Riding of Yorkshire is among the earliest of the English countrysides to greet the brave new day. The sun, rising over the North Sea horizon, paints the restless waves with steely light till they gleam like the scales of the netted harvest that the herring fleet brings home to the fish quays of Kingston-upon-Hull. When rays of sunlight touch the white face of Flamborough, sea birds there proclaim the morning W’ith sharp cries as they w’ing and dip from cliff to ocean.” Tills is a book well worth the reading for a deeper understanding of the letters and books of Winifred Holtby.