THE McKENZIE CAIRN

Hokitika Guardian, 23 May 1929, Page 7

THE McKENZIE CAIRN

(From “ Auckland Star.”) They played him home with the chieftain’s dirge Till the wail was wed to the rolling surge. I hey played him home with a sorrowful will lo his grave at the foot of the Hol\ Hill. And' the pipes went mourning all tin way. Jessie Mackay’s coronach for Sir John McKenzie comes to mind with the announcement just made by the Prime Minister concerning the erection ot a cairn to the memory oif New Zealand’s great Liberal Minister of Lands the downright Highlander who championed. 11 the landless man and the -No Man’s man.” It is to be a new cairn ; the original rough-hewn pile on a hill overlooking tho McKenzie home gradually fell to pieces years ago There is an art, evidently, even in cairn building. It should be something more than a mere heap of stones. Napier has a good example of skilled Workmanship in the construction o! these Celtic monuments; the massive cairn ‘at Macleall Park to the memory off Sir Donald Maclean, another son of the isles and lens who distinguished himself as a colonial administrator. The Dunedin telegram regarding the McKenzie memorial indicates that the cairn is to be built at Mount Puketapu. Apparently (unless the Southern people have confused the names) the original site is not chosen, for Sir Joseph Ward is stated to have instructed the Lands Department to acquire the necessary land, or, if it could not acquire it, tc take it. There is quite a McKenzie touch about that announcement. The cairn put up after the death of the big hearted Highland shepherd who became a -Minister of the Crown and a K.C.M.G. was on the shoulder off a high grassy hill called Pakihiwi-tahi. which rounds up above the Shag Poinl ( railway station, near Moeralu, on tin North Otago coast. It was there thai McKenzie was buried in August, 1901 a few weeks after he had received the insignia of his knighthood from the hands of the present King, ivho was then in New Zealand. There is a stow of Maori magic and’ enchantment aboul this hill and about its neighbour Puk' 1 tapu which should appeal to all those with Gaeelic affinities and sympathies;-Pakihiiw-tahi means literally “Tin One-Shouldered.” The name is that of a Polynesian chief who landed there from the Arni-te-nru canoe, which- was wrecked at Matakaea (ndw Shag Pointsix centuries ago. 'He had one shoulder higher than the other; says tradition. He went out bird hunting one night luring the weka by imitating its cry. But he had omitted to perform the ceremonies and repeat the prayers necessary to propitiate the gods of the new land and the spirits of the wild, and so when daylight came there he was, immovably fixed, changed into ; mountain. There is his‘shaggy head set between his bilge, unequal slioul tiers, the lower one—on which the McKenzie cairn was set —depressed as ii (says the Maoris) lie was still hauling away at his capsized canoe Arai-te-uru. endeavouring to drag her on shore. As ifor Puketapu 11 Sacred Mount,” nr “ Hill ”), that is a sharp conical hill a thousand' feet high five or six miles south of the other range and nearer the sea. It .overlooks-Palmer ston, a small wayside place, 189 miles ay railway from Christchurch. Puketapu. in the legend as told me by tin old Maoris of Moernki many years ago is Pakihiwi-tahi’s slave-wife. She was sent out to gather firewood, and venturing into the uncanny ffairy count)\ she was transformed into a mountain hut a more shapely one than her husband yonder. On the steep green slopes of the hill there are two gullies or watercourses, conspicuously indicated by lines of waving while toetoe (swamp flags). Tncse are the “kawac” or strips of flax leaves, for slings, which the luckless wahine took with her to carry home her load of firewood It may be that the earth magic ol One-Shoulder Mountain was responsible ifor the disintegration of the Hig> land cairn built If the new one is to lie set up on Puketapu (local pakeha pronunciation, “Beukertap” one hopes that it will he put togethei with sufficient strength and masoncraft to withstand the enchantments of Maori fairydom thereabouts. I d 1 not suppose there is a tohunga alive now in those parts who is able to pioliounce tbe prayer tor the removal oi the baneful tapu. Failing those mystic rites right good skirl oif the Highland pipes on the sacred spot should suffice to queel the local demons o! the soil.

A new generat’ - n has arisen t< whom tlie name of John McKenzie unknown, or at best a legend. Bu there are very many who venerate tin memory of the man who was sufficient ly courageous and grimly deteiminec. to translate the theory of closer sett \viK-nt into practical and beneficial fact. “A wider clan than ever In knew followed him borne that dowie day.” Jessie Mackay told of the ‘landless man’s” gratitude to the reformer. That sentiment of gratitude will be revived throughout the Domin jr, n by the coming ceremony over the stones of memory. J.C.