390 Essays. 
had a surprising effect. In many of their old songs, as in their proverbs, 
industry is highly praised. Such heavy work comprised paddling of war 
canoes, or dragging them out, when new, from the forests (which they some- 
times did up and down hill and ravines for many a mile), or over necks of land 
(peninsulas) on their voyages, or when digging together in their cultivations 
or fern lands with their wooden spades. The funereal wails and dirges were . 
only used on occasions of death; to attempt to use them at any other time 
was considered highly improper. Their war songs and defiances contained 
horrible curses, and were truly ferocious, and must especially have so sounded 
in the ears of a New Zealander. Several of their love songs possess tender 
and affecting passages; a selection from them would bear comparison with 
the most celebrated ones of Britain. Their sentimental songs, expressive of 
abandonment, loneliness, and despair, contain much pathos, and simply sung 
in their peculiar low notes and melancholy cadence are very affecting. They 
had also baby songs, which they chaunted to their infants. The whole of 
their poetry, while often possessing pleasing natural images and strong 
gushing sentimental utterances, was equally destitute of rhyme and metre, 
which deficiency they managed to get over in the using, by lengthening and 
shortening vowels and words, much after the manner of a chaunt; proving 
here, as at the antipodes, that the popular mind always conceives of some- 
thing in poetry far higher than mere versification. From a close examina- 
tion, however, of their poetry, it is apparent that the New Zealand poet had 
taken some pains towards rhythm, a first step as it were towards shapeliness ; 
the blocks and logs had been rough-hewn and riven, though neither file nor 
chisel had ever approached them. This is seen in the frequent omission of 
grammatical particles, in the abbreviation of proper names, in the ellipsis of 
portions of words and sentences, in the curious divisions of words at the end 
of a line (half being in one line and half in another), in the unusual lengthen- 
ing of vowels, and in the peculiar reduplication of syllables. It is this which 
makes it so diffieult to understand or translate. Much of their poetry is 
very old; none worthy of notice has been produced by the present genera- 
tion. All the various poetical effusions—praises and laments—which from 
time to time during the last twenty years have appearéd respecting Her 
Majesty the Queen, the late Prince Consort, our several Governors, &c., &c., 
are old, and merely hashed up again (perhaps for the hundredth time) and 
dexterously improvised for the occasion—a characteristic of the New Zea- 
ders, and one in which they greatly excel. Many of the so-called 
“translations” of New Zealand poetry, which have been from time to time 
printed, are not really such (not even allowing the utmost latitude to the 
translator) ; they are mystiy aca pasaphrands, not unfrequently lacking = 
pn of the original. 
