Singing Triplets At the age of 17, the Harrison Triplets (from left, Margaret, Janet and Nancy) stand at the beginning of a rosy career in pop singing. After being runners-up last year in the Auckland Maori Community Centre's Talent Quest, they won the talent quest organised last Easter by Televisions's Channel 2 in Auckland. Now they have completed their first disc (Sugartime Twist and Uptown) and are among the most promising Maori popular artists to have emerged in recent years. The Triplets are really more identical in person than this photograph suggests, and they are adept at mischievously confusing people—even those who know them very well—by changing places, and occasionally answering for each other. They are full of fun, but at the same time serious about their ambition to be top-line singers. Doubtless because of the fact that they are triplets, the girls achieve a very fine harmonic integration in their singing. They live in Auckland now, but they come from the East Coast. Their father, Rangi Harrison, was a Maori All Black, and their mother, Ngawiki Harrison, is a member of the Reedy family. A Note by Leo Fowler on his story ‘The Banishment’ (see next page) Until I heard this story from the old lady I hadn't known that the Maori followed this custom of banishment. I know it flourishes here and there in Polynesia, and it's quite common, even today, in Samoa, where I've known of whole families being banished from their villages. Old Maori friends have surprised me by telling me the custom was first introduced in early pakeha times. Thomas Samuel Grace, in his A Pioneering Missionary Among the Maoris, reporting on the Turanga Mission for the year 1851, wrote: ‘Native Teachers. I am unable to report very favourably of native teachers. In December, 1850, one was convicted of adultery and sent to the bush by his own people, where he was taken ill and died in June last. Two of my teachers who visited him report that he died penitent and happy. In October last another man was convicted of the same offence and also sent by his people to the bush.’ As usual, once one gets onto the track of these things corroborative information is not hard to get. Several of my older Maori friends have told me that this custom of banishment began in early missionary times. It was a punishment meted out for several offences, of which adultery and violation of the Sabbath appear to have been the major ones. Many have further told me that, in their own boyhood, the preparation of cooking of food on the Sabbath was strictly forbidden. It was invariably a day of cold viands. The old-time Maoris couldn't understand why the pakeha should fight his wars on the Sabbath. I have since come across stories of whalers who were driven out of native villages, or at least fined heavily, for Sunday irregularities. • Photographs on pages 42-45 of this issue are by the N.Z. Herald, on page 8 by the Wanganui Chronicle, page 15 by the Daily Post, Rotorua, page 22 by the Wanganui Herald, and page 46 by Zealandia. The photographs on pages 34, 35, and 38-40 were kindly supplied by the Alexander Turnbull Library. We are grateful to the National Museum, Copenhagen, for permission to reproduce the photo on pages 32 and 33, to the Auckland Museum for permission to photograph the carving inside the front cover, and to the Education Department for permission to reprint the story on page 6, which first appeared in the School Journal.