64 Transactions. — Miscettaneous. 



and legends. 3. Their ceremonial comprised a large and varied amount of 

 strange and yet often simple utterances and recitations (mostly spoken in a 

 whisper or undertone), which we almost want a new English word fully 

 to express ; such heing neither charm, spell, nor invocation, neither prayer, 

 request, nor supplication ; but, as it were, a little of each, with not unfre- 

 quently more or less of a command, and sometimes even a threat. 



Some slight — yet it may be painful — attempts have been from time to 

 time spasmodically made to render a few of their songs into English ; but 

 those who have attempted it, as far as I know, have greatly failed ; and 

 that, among others, for two chief reasons: — (1.) They have attempted to 

 do so in the fetters of both rhyme and metre, such too, above all, as the 

 C. M., L. M., etc., of English hymns ! or in the equally unsuitable cadenced 

 jingle of Longfellow's " Hiawatha." (2.) They have thought more of 

 themselves as "poets," than of their subjects — if indeed they in every 

 case clearly understood them, which I greatly doubt; for in some instances 

 they do not seem to me to have comprehended the Maori, or, at all events, 

 to have caught the leading ideas in the piece before them ; for some (and 

 that not a little) of the Maori poetry is as difficult to be understood by a 

 foreigner — even if he be a tolerably good linguist at common colloquial 

 Maori — as parts of the Enghsh translations of Homer and of Dante, of 

 Milton and of Shakespeare would be to an uneducated Englishman ; 

 while in the Maori language they would also have the very great 'disad- 

 vantage of not having any good lexicon, or historical work of reference, to 

 aid them. Foreign languages may be usually translated in three ways :— 

 (1.) By a- literal version ; (2.) By a free translation; and (3.) By a para- 

 phrase. But in the poetry of the New Zealanders, in order to give the true 

 meaning of the original, something more than a mere verbal rendering is often 

 absolutely required ; for their whole style is exceedingly elliptical, and 

 often abounds in allusions and aposiopesis, and the gaps need to be filled 

 up. Then there is the common want of distinction in gender, both in 

 nouns (proper names) and pronouns, which, where there is so much of per- 

 sonification, often including inanimate things, creates another difficulty ; 

 while not unfrequently the song begins and ends with a bold emphatic 

 denial of its true and pregnant meaning. Besides, to translate clearly into 

 English one Maori song or poetical piece, might require a large amount of 

 knowledge of their legendary lore and of historical facts and events, and of 

 their general natural history. Indeed to perform this work well, a person 

 should bring to it not knowledge merely, but sympathetic imagination, and 

 there are few, if any, among us who possess those highly necessary requi- 

 sites. Moreover the idioms and the whole structure of the two languages 

 are so very dissimilar. But on this head I shall not now dwell, concluding 



