Notes on the Song

Te Ao Hou, December 1965, Page 20

Notes on the Song Po! Po! is probably a shortened form of ‘Potiki! Potiki!’ Oriori were often composed for the potiki (youngest child) in the family. In the second line the words ‘my son’ refer to the child for whom the oriori was composed. Pillar-of-netted-seafood (Pou-a-hao-kai) is a figure of speech used of seafoods being collected for a feast.

Milk: Elsdon Best notes that the expression waiu is sometimes used with reference to food which when eaten by the mother, was believed to help her feed her child. Uru, Ngangana and their children Te Aotu and Te Aohore are mythical personages. Tangaroa is the god of the sea and of fish. The Stone of Poutini is an expression for greenstone, which in traditional accounts is often referred to as a fish. Hine-tuahoanga is the personification of the kinds of stones used as grindstone, for example in working greenstone. The mythical personage Maui-whare-kino was married to Pani; he stole the kumara from Whanui in the heavens and mated it with his wife, who then gave birth to the kumara in the waters of Monariki. In the next few lines there appear to be references to ritual matters concerned with the kumara and its origin, but the exact meaning of these expressions is uncertain. The posts mentioned in the second line of the next verse were the two posts erected at the tuaahu, the sacred place or altar where many religious rituals took place. Rongo is a mythical personage, the god of the cultivation of food and other peacetime pursuits. Rongo-maraeroa, one form of the name, is also a sacred name for the kumara. The significance of the lines in which the word occurs is uncertain. Tu is a shortened form of Tu-mata-uenga, god of war. Matuatonga is sometimes said to have arrived on board the Takitimu canoe. According to other accounts, Matuatonga is the name of the belt in which the kumara was brought to Aotearoa. Ruatapu and Uenuku (who is also mentioned in the sixth line of the song) are personages who according to a famous myth, lived in Hawaiki, one of the homelands of the Maori. Insulted by his father Uenuku, Ruatapu sought revenge by overturning at sea the canoe which carried his many noble kinsmen. One of them, Paikea, escaped to Aotearoa in the form of a whale (in other accounts, riding on a whale) and landed on the East Coast. Maninitua and Maniniaro occur in the myth of Pourangahua as the kumara digging-sticks which he brought back from Hawaiki, together with the kumara itself, in his journey on the back of the Great Bird of Ruakapanga. Hakirirangi is said to have arrived on the Horouta canoe, and to have brought the kumara with her. She was expert in kumara lore and knew well how to plant it at the time of the flowering of the kowhai. Manawaru and Araiteuru were names of kumara plantations at Turanga (Gisborne). Makauri is the name of a kahika tree (white pine) said to have grown at the bottom of the sea from the feathers which Pourangahua plucked from his bird when he was flying home with the kumara. A branch of the tree became the property of Mahaki, ancestor of Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki tribe. Toka-ahuru is a reef out from the shore at Turanga. Mangamoteo and Uetanguru are rivers at Turanga. According to some accounts Rongo-rapua is the name of a belt in which the kumara reached this country. The last line refers to the fact that autumn is also the time when birds and rats are fat.