Tikawe’s Swan-song

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 25, 19 June 1912, Page 47

Tikawe’s Swan-song

A Folk-tale of Rotoiti Specially Writ en for the “ Weekly Graphic,” by James Cowan.

©N the 'southern coa#t line of Rotoiti. the Thermal Country’s loveliest lake, and not far from its western end, where it receives the overflow of Rotorua, you will see as you sail a motor-boat down the lake, a steep white-faced peninsula, fislandlike in its conformation, rising from the bhie waters. The seaward side of the headland is precipitous and shines like chalk in the sun. The hill is flat-topped and fern-covered; at the rear it drops steeply to a low and narrow spit connecting the peninsula with the mainland. •Such an eligible pa site as this would not be passed over by the ancient Maori in his search for his waterside strongholds. and so we find that it was once upon a time a celebrated fortress of the Rotoiti people, and a populous hill-town, its name is Motu-tawa ; it was anciently occupied by the Tuhourangt tribe (whose few descendants now live in the geyser valley Whakairwarewa.) until NgatiPikiao of the strong arm clubbed and ate them out. Sailing down past Motu-tawa one morning, with a soft westerly breeze just

fanning our little sixteen-footer along, iny old crui»ing-mate Tamarahi told me something of its history. Not only was Motu-tawa a strong and secure retreat in time of war. but it was famous in other ways. That white lakeward precipice, sheer and unclimbable, was a suicide-cliff of ihuch celebrity. Many Maoris usually women, ended their lives by hurling themselves from such a height as this; and several cheiftainesses took the last leap of “Whakamoinori,” or desperation. from Motu-tawa’s cruet cliff-edge. Many primitive people, such as the American Indians adopted the same way of ridding themselves of the burden of life, throwing themselves over the most terrible precipices in an agony of remorse or jealousy, or disappointed love. Ami as I listened to the touching story of the death-leap of Tikawe, sailing slowly by the story-place, I reme mitered that other story of an Old World white cliff from which •burning Sappho” threw herself to death in her hopeless love for Phaon. For- was it not a bold precipice like unto Motu-tawa—if <4d St ratio’s ‘‘Geography” and other classic tomes are any guide—the peninsula of Leiicadia where the white glittered in the sun. whereon the great poetess of the Isles of Greece sang her swan song Indore she took the leap that ended all her sorrows? But listen to the legend of |mh»t Tikaw •. Three generations ago or somewhat more in the early part of the la»t cent wry there'lived here on breezw Motia , taw a a young chieftaimss whom* name Was Tikawe. She was married to a man

of the Ngati-Pikiao tribe, the lords of alt this lake and its green and curving shores. Here she lived happily in the palisaded village, of her warrior elan, until it came upon a day that her husband left- her on a visit to a distant tribe. He travelled down the East Coast until he reached the downs of Heretaunga which the white man calls Hawke’s Bay. There li • found friends in a village which stood near where the town of Napier stands today, an.t there he stayed, forgetful of his wife in the . faraway Lakeland. And Tikawe was lonely here in Motutawa. Every day she would sit for hours on the edge of the cliff up yonder, and gaze out across the lake at the ferny hills where the track came in from the sea and she would sing little ’waitas” of love, to herself, and say: — “But a little while and he will return he will return to me." But the days passed on, and the absent one came not. And presently the news reached Motu-tawa that Tikawe’s husband had taken another wife, a young woman of the Ngati-Kahungunu,

the Hawke’s Bay tribe, and that he declared he would never return to Rotoiti. When the poor deserted wahine' learned this, she was dike to die in the grief of her wounded love. She lay on the soft-matted floor of her whare," refusing all ’food and speaking no word. And in the morning, win n the night mists had lifted from the sleeping lake and the sun came up over lofty -Matawliaura yonder, revealing all the soft blue beauties of lake ami its green islands and forests and hill, over which the till and the makomako gurgled ami cHimed their bell-notes in the tliickets on Motutawa's southern slope - in the morning Tikawe came forth to die. Resolved to die she was. because of the shame that had been put upon her. The people were gathering in the “Marae,” the village square. for their morning meal as she walked out of her house. .She was arrayed as if for a festival. Around her tall and beautiful form she wore a long and handsome flaxen cloak a “korowai,” of softest finest texture. On her bosom lay a greenstone "tiki," a treasured heirloom, and greenstone pendants’ were in her ears, ami in her long arid shining hair were fastened three feathers of the liiiiu bird. With bowed head Tikawe' walked slowly into the centre of the "marae," nnrl there listened to in death-like silence by the assembled ’ jpeople.'khe ehanted-hewpitiful "Wuiata-aroha," her "Kopu poroporoaki." her parting wonts of love and •orrow. It was her own dirge that she

chanted there in the midst of the silent -and sorrowful trrbe. This is the song she chanted; it is often sung to thia day in the villages of the Arawa people: “No tidings came of thee, O husband, well-beloved! I tarried long and wearily.! And then the evil word there came. The evil, word that, travelled slow— On the shores of the Rising Sun thou dwell est, By the waters of the Whangauui-a-ilotu. In Aitu'a home. My house-pillar has fallen, fallen; My staff is torn away! And now I go to death. In my hair the Huia’s plume. Around me these soft flaxen cl.aka: Fair is the land I look upon. Fair are the waters of Rotoiti. The wide waters of the Kbko-Hauga-nia. Spread out before me. But now- I gaze my Lust. No more will man approach me. No more my body's charms entice; Desolate. am I as the forests of Taheke: Bitterness is within me, I i — e ee! ” “And so," says Tamarahi. “she ended her song and she raised- her head and stood erect, and she walked to the edge of yon “pari, the cliff edge, and there she paused a moment, and looked her last look at Rotoiti. And then, folding her garments dose about her. she jumped out off the verge of the cliff and fell and was killed on the hard rocks below! That was the way of the Maori: she could not live without her husband's love. She sang her farewell song—she leajied —she fell —she died!”