CoLENSO. — 0)1 a better Knowledge of the Maori Race, 59 



selves, with songs. While the young men and women were undergoing the 

 painful and protracted operation of tattooing, the females sang a suitable 

 song of encouragement and hope. The females, also, courted and covertly 

 indicated their tender feelings in songs ; the disconsolate lover sought to 

 assuage his melancholy with songs ; * and not unfrequently the suicide 

 (especially when a female, and about to throw herself from a precipics) 

 sang her last words, like a dying swan, — or after the example of Sappho — in 

 a song ! 



Their handsome forest pet, the tuii, or parson-bird, (Prosthemadera nova:- 

 zealandia) , was taught with much pains a very long song, though they might 

 have more easily taught him to whistle, f Children sang or trolled songs 

 in summer to lessen the power of the sun's rays, also to cause the rain to 

 cease, and to lull the fierce winds, etc. The chiefs sang suitable songs to 

 their pretty paper kites while flying them, and the young women did the 

 same to their light stuffed and ornamented hand-ball while engaged at their 

 pleasing and dexterous game of }^oi ; the women also extemporized their 

 joyous songs over a plentiful haul of fish, or an abundant snaring of birds, 

 and, also, had then* semi-humorous songs for their big gourds or pumpkins, 

 in cutting or breaking them up for cooking. The old Maoris even professed 

 to have heard songs, of a highly curious character, sung by the spirits of 

 the dead ! and by fancied atuas, supernatural beings, while engaged in fish- 

 ing far out at sea.| These latter they responded to and sang their replies. 



* " I think," observes Burns, " it is one of the greatest pleasures attending a poetic 

 genius, that we can give our woes, cares, joys, and loves, an embodied form in verse, 

 which, to me, is ever immediate ease." It is said of Fuseli, the painter, that seeing his 

 wife in a passion one day, he said, "Swear, my love, swear heartily ; you know not how 

 much it will ease you ! " 



t Vocal whistling, however, was almost whoUy unknown, and never practised, being 

 quite foreign to the natural musical genius of this people ; indeed they often showed a 

 dislike to it when made by a European (as I have proved). Probably this aversion to 

 vocal whistling was owing to their superstitious views, as (they said) their familiar spirits 

 or demons (atuas) thus made their presence known. Yet they had a peculiar kind of 

 loud whistle in use by their chiefs, made out of hollowed hardwood, though not very 

 common, when Cook visited them. 



I There is a singularity here which has frequently reminded me of what is recorded 

 of the Greenlanders, who, however, did not meet their supernatural visitants so bravely 

 as the Maoris. It is said " that their times were often made painful by fancied terrors ; 

 sad sounds were often abroad in the air, and there were noises also on the deep and the 

 shore, for which they could not account. In the sublime description in the Apocrypha, 

 ' they heard the sound of fearful things rushing by, but saw not the form thereof.' " And 

 again, " Of spectres they stand greatly in dread. The loneliness of their lives, where the 

 sense of hearing is often invaded with the most appalling sounds, conduces to this 

 belief. The spirits of the lost at sea are heard to come on shore in the dead of night, 



