KOROTANGI, THE SACRED BIRD Edited and Translated by BARRY MITCALFE KOROTANGI: TE MANU TAPU na Ngatipikiao Kahore te aroha ki taku potiki Tuhana tonu koe, i te ahiahi, Ka tomo ki te whare, taka atu kau ai: Tirohia iho, e hine, mau ki te parera e tare atu na Ehara tena he manu maori, Me titiro ki te huruhuru whakairoiro mai no tawhiti, Kei whea korotau, ka ngaro nei? Tena ka riro, kei te kato kai, Ki te rau powhata, nga Whakangaeore Tunui me to po, ka oho au; E waiho ana koe hei tiaki hanga, Hei korero taua, ki tena taumata, He oti te huri atu, ko Kawatepurangi. Great is my love for this sweet thing That glows within, like the evening. But it has gone, I am alone In this empty house. Look, my dear one, At the birds floating there. They are nothing They are common birds. The carved wings, The stone feathers of the Korotau have flown Over many more miles of ocean— None know where he has been, Nor where he is gone. Was he seen Eating the leaves of the powhata? Black as night, the Whakangaeore mountains Block the sight. I leave you, guardians Of our substance. Men of the hills Have heard, They speak of him still; But I am gone, (1)Kawatepurangi, a noted ancestor and tohunga of Ngatipikiao, probably guardian of the Korotangi. (1) Kawatepurangi lives on.

The origins of the Korotangi, a stone bird carved of dark green serpentine, are shrouded by controversy and ignorance. Some descendants of Tainui claim that the Korotangi came from Hawaiki on their canoe (J.P.S. Vol. 26, 1917). This belief has been taken further by certain over-enthusiastic exponents of the Aryo-Semitic origin of the Maori race, who suggested that it was brought by the Maoris from their original home in Asia (Trans. of N.Z. Inst., Vol. 4, p. 40). The Korotangi is certainly Eastern in the style of its carving. According to W. J. Phillipps, similar stone birds have been found in Malaya, Japan and in the excavations at Ur on the Chaldees. Possibly the Korotangi came from the wreck of a Tamil (Southern Indian) vessel, which may have come ashore between Kawhia and Raglan on the West Coast. In 1877, shifting sands revealed the ribs of a vessel, supposedly Asiatic in origin, but this was on a journalist's rather than a scientist's