He waiata na Timotu

Tu Tangata, Issue 24, 1 June 1985, Page 38

He waiata na Timotu

Margaret Orbell

N about 1834, a man named Timotu was living at Meremere, near Te Hawera (Hawera) in southern Taranaki. His tribe was Ngati Ruanui. Timotu had been a famous warrior, but was now suffering from asthma. Some of his kinsmen who had migrated to Waikanae, far to the south, found themselves facing a war there and came asking for his assistance. Timotu had to tell them that he could not help them, and he afterwards composed a waiata complaining of his illness and expressing his grief. 1

Like much of the poetry of the Taranaki district, Timotu’s song is remarkable for the power of its imagery. In the first lines, the waning moon is identified with his declining strength. Though sometimes his heart ‘comes to rest’ and he is reconciled to his fate, soon he feels again the urge to fight. Rehua is a deity believed to bring the warm months of the year; Timotu is as isolated as one of the solitary, wandering fish sometimes caught in the early summer. Fish were traditionally thought of as victims, and this idea must lie behind the next image as well. Motu-kiore is a large flat rock at the mouth of the Tangahoe River where the fishermen used always to gut their fish. The poet must have referred to this rock partly because of the use of which it was put.

In the second stanza, evil and death are seen as having their origin in the darkness of the underworld, the entrance to which is at Te Reinga. It is not known why the mythical Rongotaharangi is mentioned, but one authority tells us that a figure of this name is guardian of the sun. If the poet held this belief, and if the sun is identified with light and life, the meaning must be that the guardian of life and wellbeing is turning away and neglecting his duties. 2 People who were unhappy or disadvantaged in some way were traditionally said to lie, or sleep, in a bent-up position. Mahutonga is the constellation of the Southern Cross, which does not sink below the horizon but constantly moves around the sky; its circling motion is associated with sorrow.

In the last line, Timotu compares himself to the harrier hawk, which in the early summer is seen as screaming with hunger, and to the bittern; the booming cries of the male bittern as it called to its mate were thought to be expressive of loneliness and sorrow. These images must have been felt to be all the more appropriate because Timotu, who was suffering from asthma, could be thought to be making similar sounds.

A New Significance Timotu’s song is his monument. It soon became famous among the West Coast tribes, and the second stanza, which originally lamented the loss of bodily strength, came to be sung on its own as a lament for the dead. It is sometimes spoken of as a tangi apakura, a kind of song which is not so much a lament for an individual as a confrontation of death itself, and its performance, whether by mourners at a tangihanga or an orator remembering the past, is accompanied by much emotion. In 1930, James Cowan wrote that it was ‘the most dramatic wailing chant I have ever heard.... Whenever it is sung it has an electrical effect upon the people, who rise and join in it with the most intense feeling'. And Cowan de-

scribed the ‘splendour’ of its performance at a great tangihanga he had attended: I saw the Whanganui chief Takarangi Mete Kingi rise to his feet and raise his greenstone mere above his head, in signal to his people. He cried the opening words of the death chant and the next moment all the assembled mourners sprang to their feet, and with two black-garbed women at their front gesticulating and rolling their eyes, they broke into a grand chorus.... They stamped and threw their arms this way and that, and the women waved their leafy twigs of koromiko and willow, emblems of sorrow, and as they sang with full voice the ancient rhythmic poem, it seemed as if they were defiantly challenging the Death that lay personified before them.... Eyes rolling, head-feathers dancing, black tresses tossing, greenstone and whalebone weapons and carved taiahas brandished, the people ended their great song with a long-drawn cry. And Takarangi, with mere quivering, called his loud farewell until he almost screamed it: ‘Farewell! Depart, depart! And greet your thousand ancestors

Go, go, go to That Place!’ 3 An earlier account of a performance by an orator comes from an Englishman, J.E. Gorst, who in 1906 revisited the Waikato tribes he had known 44 years previously. At that time Gorst had been a resident magistrate at Te Awamutu, and while he had been powerless to prevent the onset of war, he had won the friendship and respect of many leading men. He was now received with honour and greeted with emotion, all the more so because his reappearance after so many years brought back memories of the men and women of that time who were no longer alive. He later described his reception by Ngati Maniapoto: The first speaker was Tuko Rewo, a white-haired old chief, who spoke the most cordial and affecting words of welcome, and in a high quavering voice sang a song, in which he likened my reappearance to the first dawn of light in the morning sky. I had gone as a chief from their midst, and I now returned to them as a chief. All the high chiefs of olden days were gone, and I remained alone. He ended his speech by chanting the pathetic old song of sorrow for the dead which begins:-

Listen, oh ye people, This is the parent of death, and all the assembly joined with heartfelt energy in the chorus. 4 Timotu’s song has been sung now for 150 years. During this time it has acquired further depths of meaning, as it has come to be associated with all of those who have sung it in the past.

Notes 1. The text of this song, and many of the explanations, come from pages 276-9 of Nga M oteatea volume 1, by Apirana Ngata (Wellington 1959). The line divisions are uncertain. The tribal rivalries which led to the request for Timotu’s assistance, and eventually to the battle of Haowhenua, are recounted on pages 34-43 of The Kapiti Coast, by W.C. Carkeek (Wellington 1966). Ngati Ruanui were allied with Te Atiawa against Ngati Raukawa. 2. For Rongotaharangi, see pages 60 and 167 of The Lore of the Whare Wananga part 1, edited by S. Percy Smith (New Plymouth 1913). The wordparoa is not explained in the dictionaries. I have followed Pei Te Hurinui in Nga M oteatea in translating it as ‘far off. 3. Page 321 of Legends of the Maori volume 1, by Maui Pomare and James Cowan (Wellington 1930-4). 4. Page 286 of New Zealand Revisited by J.E. Gorst (London 1908).