He tangi mo Te Iwi-ika

Tu Tangata, Issue 11, 1 April 1983, Page 28

He tangi mo Te Iwi-ika

Margaret Orbell.

Only a few of the traditional Maori songs of the South Island have been published, for in the nineteenth century most the pakeha collectors of South Island lore paid little attention to poetry, and early this century there were none who knew the language. Yet until about 1930, perhaps even later than this, there were surviving elders who were authorities on the ancient songs and traditions.

At this time the main collector of South Island folklore was J. Herries Beattie, a modest, unassuming man who preserved a considerable amount of information that would otherwise have been lost. Knowing his own limitations, and knowing the importance of recording the knowledge that these elders possessed, Beattie tried in about 1920 to persuade the North Island scholar Elsdon Best to interview Teone Taare Tikao, a learned man who was living at Rapaki on Banks Peninsula. Best declined to go, claiming he was such a bad sailor that he could not face the ferry trip from Wellington to Lyttelton 1 . Possibly he thought there was little to be learnt in the south. If so, he made a disastrous mistake.

Beattie did the best that he could in the circumstances; he spent two weeks questioning Teone Taare Tikao on many subjects, with Tikao, then aged seventy, remaining ‘kindly, patient, obliging, urbane and informative’ throughout. Their cooperation resulted in a useful book, published in a small edition in 1939. But there are no songs in their book. Beattie tells us that at a certain point Tikao had insisted on dictating old songs and genealogies:

For two whole days I did nothing but painfully and laboriously write down the Maori dictation of songs and genealogies.... Then he asked to see how I had written one of the songs, after which he eyed me aghast, and cried, ‘You have got all the main words correct, but you have put in no grammar!’....

His faith or confidence in my powers was sadly shaken, and thereafter he confined himself to English 2 .

When Tikao died in 1927, many of his songs went with him.

Songs sung at Waikouaiti

The information that Tikao provided does, however, make it easier to understand those South Island songs that have survived. Among them are some collected in Otago.by F.R. Chapman, a man with wide historical and scientific interests who was a barrister, and later a Judge of the Supreme Court.

Though Chapman did not publish very much, and apparently had little knowledge of Maori, he was far-sighted enough to make a collection of historical manuscripts, some of them written by Maoris, which is now preserved in the Hocken Library in Dunedin.

The song published here is taken from one of Chapman’s manuscripts. With other songs, it was written down at Waikouaiti by Moses Wood at the dictation of his aunt Pinana, either in 1894 or soon afterwards. For permission to publish it, the writer is indebted to the Librarian, the Hocken Library, Dunedin 3 .

Songs often passed from one district to another, so the fact that this song was recorded in the South Island does not prove it was composed there. But it must come from the south, for its mythical allusions correspond exactly to a version of the myth of Tane which was recorded by Tikao and other South Island authorities.

Tane and his daughter

This myth explains the origin of life and death. After Tane had created the world by separating the sky and the earth, he created the first woman. She bore him a daughter, whom he named Hine-titama, and this daughter later became his wife; they also had children, among them two girls, Tahu-kumea and Tahu-whakairo. But one day Hinetitama discovered that her husband was also her father, and in great dis-

tress she rushed down to the underworld. When Tane found she was gone he followed her and urged her to return, but she would not do so. Finally she took her leave of him, saying, ‘Return to the world, Tane, to rear up our progeny, and let me go to the underworld, to drag down our progeny’ 4 .

So Hine-titama, in the underworld, now drags men down to death. But new generations replace those who die, for in the world above, Tane creates new life.

A lament, and an affirmation of life

In her song the poet, whose name is unknown, first laments the death of her husband, Te Iwi-ika, then sends him on the path he must travel to the underworld, the home of Hine-titama (who, after she went to live down below, is more usually said to have taken the

name Hine-nui-te-po). The poet also refers to Hine-titama’s two daughters, who accompanied her to the underworld; she calls them Tahi-kumea and Tahu-whaera.

In line 15, there is a reference to a house called Poutererangi. This is a name sometimes given to Hine-titama’s

4 house in the underworld, or the door of her house. Another South Island name for this house is Whare-o-Pohutukawa, Pohutukawa’s house 5 ; so in this song the name Poutukutia is probably a mishearing of Pohutukawa. (In the North Island, the souls of the dead were said to leap to the underworld from the branches of an ancient pohutukawa tree that grew at Reinga in the far north-west. But in the South Island there were no pohutukawa, so this part of the story must have become meaningless. It seems that in this area the word pohutukawa retained its association with death but came to be regarded as the name of a person who presided over the souls of the dead).

The last twelve lines of the song describe how Tane, returned from the underworld, sets about his task of making the world fertile, first going on a

journey to the highest of the skies; according to one version of the story, there are in this region te wai ora a Tane, ‘the living waters of Tane’, from which come the souls of new-born babies 6 . Rehua and Tama-i-waho are figures who inhabit the skies; sometimes both are on the highest level, and sometimes Rehua is in the ninth and Tama-i-waho in the first sky. Rangi-whaka-upoko-i-runga, or Rangi-who-forms-the-head-above, is a South Island name for Rangi the sky father, who was believed to preside over the tenth, highest sky 7 .,‘The world of light’ is an expression for the world of the living, as opposed to the underworld, which was identified with darkness. So while the poet begins with death, she ends by affirming that life will continue and that ‘the world of light’ will be triumphant.

References Beattie. J. Herries 1939. Tikao talks. Reed, Dunedin. Wohlers, J.F.H. 1874. ‘The mythology and traditions of the Maori in New Zealand’, Transactions and proceedings of the New Zealand Institute 7:3-53.

Notes 1 See the foreward in Beattie 1939. 2 Beattie 1939:160. 3 The manuscript reference is MS 416 A, song no. 3. Professor Mervyn McLean, of the University of Auckland, informs the writer that the text is not to be found in his manuscript index of the first lines of published Maori songs. It would seem, therefore, that it has not previously appeared in print. 4 See Wohlers 1874:8-10, 34-6, also Beattie 1939:33. 5 Beattie 1939:33. 6 Beattie 1939:35. 7 Beattie 1939:29. 8 Possibly the first line means ‘Seeking [the reason for] Te Iwi ika’s death’. The second line in the Maori text (the third one in the translation) is also of uncertain meaning, and may not have been recorded correctly. 9 In lines 4-5, and again in lines 7-8, the poet employs a standard poetic device in first speaking of her husband, then addressing him. 10 In the South Island dialect the sound k is italicised.