68 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



of their paddles against the sides of the canoe, accompanying the same, at 

 regular intervals, with their united voices, which arose together more like 

 the voice of one man !* 



They broke up and prepared their extensive tribal kimiara plantations, 

 working regularly together in a compact body, chief and slave, keeping 

 time with their songs, which they also sang in chorus. When visitors 

 arrived, the open talk was invariably commenced with a suitable song, 

 which was responded to by the visitors in a like manner ; which, indeed — 

 and especially whenever the meeting was an important one — often indicated 

 both their feelings and determination. They took up arms and went to 

 war with songs ; they sung them before engaging with the enemy ; the 

 watchers within a besieged fort kept on announcing the passing hours, and 

 the movements of the stars and planets, with short suitable songs. They 

 taunted and sorely galled their foes with songs ; they gave loud utterance to 

 their most deadly and revengeful feelings in songs ; they closed their battles 

 and feuds, and made peace with songs ; they bitterly mourned over and 

 bewailed, and finally deposited their dead, with parting songs and dirges. 

 Their many and varied spells, charms, counter-charms, invocations, 

 ceremonial calls and demands, and propitiations, mostly took the poetical 

 form. On entering a forest for the first time to fell a tree, they invariably 

 prefaced their operation with a pleasing song of deprecation to the presiding 

 deity, genius loci, or guardian of the place ; f on their finishing (or opening 

 for reception) of a chief's large or tribal house, that was done always with a 

 poem or song (katm) ; so, also, on their first casting of one of their immense 

 seine nets — originally made in separate pieces (or nets) by each family, and 

 now put together — they used the proper chaunts or songs. Sufferers by 

 calamity, — as by floods, by drought, or by fire, — the sea, and war,- — through 

 theft and slander, — each and all expressed their griefs, and consoled them- 



* " Their war-dance is always accompanied by a song ; it is wild indeed, but not 

 disagreeable ; and every strain ends in a lotid and deep sigh, which they utter in concert. 

 * * * In their song they keep time with such exactness, that I have often heard 

 above 100 paddles struck against the sides of their boats at once, so as to produce but a 

 single sound at the divisions of their music." — Cook, First Voyage, Vol. III., p. 468. 



t Among their ancient myths and legends are some pleasing and warning stories of 

 some daringly thoughtless persons, who had veiitured to hew down trees for canoes with- 

 out first paying the usual apologetic and deprecatory ceremonies ; which have always 

 served to remind me of the story of Erysicthon, who impiously " rushed without shame 

 into the grove of Ceres, and hewed down the trees," and paid a fearful penalty for his 

 transgression (as told by Callimachus in his hymn to Demeter). But those thoughtless 

 Maoris, in all instances, eventually escaped far better than Erysicthon did ; although, in 

 some cases, they often repeated their crime. Was this owing to the milder nature of the 

 Maori wood-nymphs — as conceived by the old Maoris ? 



