Then tribe after tribe rose to pay tribute to the dead. Chief after chief stood up to deliver his “poroporoaki,” his salute to the spirit of Te Hetana.[1] Up rose Hori Te Huki, a grey old chief of Ngatikahungunu. “Haere atu, e koro! Farewell, O Old Man!” he cried. “Go thou to that last dwelling-place to salute thy honoured ancestors, to greet the spirits of the mighty dead.”
Then Te Huki broke out into a plaintive lament, in which all his people quickly joined in a resounding chant. It was an ancient lament by a widow for her departed husband:—
Restless I lie
Within my lonely house,
For the loved one of my life
Has passed away.
The singers, their voices rising and falling in wild cadences, went on to compare the dead chieftain to an uprooted tree: “My shelter from the blustering wind, alas, ’tis now laid low.”
Then the poet developed another beautiful piece of imagery:—
Behold yon glistening star so bright—
Perhaps ’tis my beloved friend,
Returned to me again.
O sire, return!
And tread with me again
Thy old loved paths.
Changing the metaphor again, the mourners chanted all together:—
O thou that art gone,
Thou wert as a great canoe
Decked with the snowy down
Of lordly albatross.
In another dirge, introducing many mythological allusions, the poet said:—“Thou’rt borne away in the canoe Rewarewa; snatched from us by the gods Raukatauri and Ruatangata. Dip deep the paddles, all together, to bear thee far away.”
- ↑ Mr. Seddon.
