390 Essays. 



had a surprising e:ffect. 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. Prom 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 difiicult 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 appeared respecting Her 

 Majesty the Queen, the late Prince Consort, our several Grovernors, &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- 

 landers, 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 mostly wild paraphrases, not unfrequently lacking the 

 ideas of the original. 



