He Waiata Aroha mo Te Uruti

Tu Tangata, Issue 14, 1 October 1983, Page 56

He Waiata Aroha mo Te Uruti

na Mihi-ki-te-kapua

The kind of traditional song known as a waiata generally took the form of a lament, but it was not only an outlet for emotion. It was also an important means of communication, a way of conveying a message to persons addressed by the poet, and others as well. Often the poet would sing his or her song in the presence of those addressed in it, but when they were living elsewhere the song would pass from one singer to another until it reached its destination. The composer of a good song could be confident it would eventually be heard by the persons to whom it was addressed. Such songs were sung for enjoyment and because of their human interest, and they became known far and wide.

Mihi-ki-te-kapua was a famous poet of Ngati Ruapani who lived on the shore of Lake Waikaremoana in the Urewera district. Several of her songs express the loneliness of her old age, when her children had left her. One of them is a waiata aroha, song of yearning, composed when she heard that her daughter, Te Uruti, was being illtreated by her husband. Te Uruti was at Whakatane, a place near Te Whaiti in the rugged, heavily forested country to the north of the lake. The journey there was long and arduous, and Mihi could not visit her daughter. Her song, however, must soon have reached her. A Mixture of Old and New

Mihi’s songs were composed in the years between about 1845 and 1885. Like most of the songs of this period, they are transitional in style and content. Instead of the complexity and concision of the classical poetry there is a relatively simple and expanded style, and new material is employed in ways that are essentially traditional. It is this mixture of old and new that gives such songs their special interest.

When a poet mourning the absence of a loved one could glimpse from her home a hill near the place where that person was living, she might speak of this as providing a link with her beloved; on the other hand, if no such landmark were visible she might blame a hill for barring the way. Mihi allows herself poetic license in blaming instead a large and famous bird-spearing tree, a kahikatea named Te Waiwhero that stood near Te Whaiti. In reality the way was barred by the high ranges of the Ureweras, notably the Huiarau range immediately to the north; but since Te Waiwhero was a well-known landmark, this passage added interest to her song. The reference to smoke is traditional. Clouds flying towards a poet, or wind, or a flight of birds, or smoke from a fire could be regarded as messengers coming from the loved one.

A New Form of Communication In the second stanza the poet speaks of a new form of communication that could be used between those separated by distance, and laments that she does not have the knowledge to use it. Ihaka must have been someone at Whakatane who knew how to read, so would have been able to read a letter to her daughter if she could have sent one; he may have been a lay preacher, a man who was spreading the Christian faith. The missionaries had taught their con-

verts to read and write so that they could study the Bible, and Maoris had seized upon this new system and quickly made use of it; by the 1840 s they were writing many letters, often using language similar to that of oratory. This reference to writing as a new skill suggests that the song may have been composed in the 1840 s or 50s. Haumapuhia, who made the lake At her home on the northern shore of the lake, Mihi could look straight across

to the place on the southern side where the water disappears down an underground channel known as Te Whangaromanga. She likens her tears to this, the main outlet from the lake. Lake Waikaremoana is said to have been formed in the early times by a woman named Haumapuhia. One day her father, a magician named Mahu, ordered her to draw water for him from a spring, but she refused to do so. In his rage he thrust her into the spring, and she became a taniwha. She struggled to

escape, forming as she did so the different arms of the lake. Then at last she dug down through the earth, making the underground channel. When she came out again into the light, she turned to stone. She lies there still, and her moans are still to be heard. Ruawharo And His Sons The last stanza in Mihi-ki-te-kapua’s song is very similar to a song that was published by George Grey in 1853 in his Ko Nga Moteatea... (page cvi). Grey’s song is probably the older one. The text

and a translation are as follows.

E ai rawa taua, e hika, Ko Kupe, ko Ngake, ko Ruawharo, I tuwha noa ra i ana potiki, Tu noa i te one ko Matiu, ko Makaro, Ko Moko-tua-raro, ko tawhiti e Ko Ngaruroro ra, ko Rangatira ra e!

My friend, we are just like Kupe, Ngake and Ruawharo, Who distributed his children So that Matiu and Makaro just stand on the beach, And Moko-tua-raro is far away, Over there at Ngaruroro and Rangatira!

Here the unknown poet is lamenting the loss of his or her children, likening himself to three early, mythical figures who became separated from their children. In fact he brings together two different versions of a single story.

First, there is the case of Kupe and his companion Ngake. In this, the bestknown account, the precursor Kupe comes to Aotearoa to make it ready for mankind, and he and Ngake distribute their children along the coast, leaving them there as landmarks, turned to stone. (See Elsdon Best’ account in The Journal of the Polynesian Society, volume 26, pages 146-7.) Matiu and Makaro (or Makara) are daughters, or nieces, of Kupe whom he left turned to islands in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, or Wellington Harbour; they are now known to the Pakeha as Somes and Ward Islands.

In another version of the story that comes from Heretaunga, or Hawke’s Bay, it was Ruawharo, the tohunga of the Takitimu canoe, who distributed his three sons along the Heretaunga coast so as to establish mauri that would attract whales to this district. The three sons, Matiu, Makara and Moko-tua-raro, are still to be seen there as rocks; Ngaruroro is the name of a river near Napier, and Rangatira is one further along the coast. (See J.H. Mitchell’s book Takitimu, pages 60-61.)

So Mihi-ki-te-kapua must have taken over this little song, or one very like it, though she speaks only of Ruawharo. The point is that her children are now far distant and lost to her, just as happened with Ruawharo’s sons. In other songs also, Matiu, Makaro and Moko-tua-raro appear as children who are set apart, lonely and unreachable. When their significance has become clear in one song, it can be understood in the others as well.

Mihi’s song was published first by Elsdon Best, then by Apirana Ngata in volume I of Nga Moteatea (pages 60-63). In the text given here the first three stanzas come from Ngata, and the last one from a better version published in Mitchell’s Takitimu.

Margaret Orbell