LAMENT OF RIUTOTO FOR TE HIAKAI.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 209, 30 August 1873, Page 1

LAMENT OF RIUTOTO FOR TE HIAKAI.

There dawns the day, it mounts aloft, To remind me of the years in which he lived. Oh! Hia, whose fame spread along the heavens! The moo has lost her horp, 'tis broken. My heart wert thou; .-, , Thou were beautiful as the Piki Kotuku Thou didst swim to the south ac a whale,

x And to Tv thou wert carried by the winds, . To take the front of battle was thy wont. Hadst thou but retired to the rear ! Oh ! why did not that arm uplifted s Light upon the foe. As in the battle front thou wert so fearless, And led thy columns on to carry all, their wrath. Did they cut thee in pieces, that thine Enemies might see their foe ? That Taupo, that Rotorua might see thee too ? j)id they make arrows of thy bones With which to take birds That eat cho Miro on the mountains of Titi ? Oh, Father come back to our 'canoe ! It rolls, and there is none to steer it.. But soon the earth will quake: The waters of the Waikato will flow out: My joy i 3, that again the lightningß of heayjn Uare rested upon Hakari An omen of vengeance for thy death. Tv was the Mars of New Zealand, the god of war; to him human sacrifices were offered; the first prisoner taken in war was sacrificed; his heart was taken out, roasted in a sacred oven, then presented to Tu. Their war songs have constant reference to tills deity. They had a class of gods who were deified men— -their own friends deified at death; they were supposed to sit on the roofs of their houses and whistle, and to reside in the body of an insect or a lizard. These ideas might have originated in the ancient doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of boulb. They evidently believed that souls passed from one body to another. They had a demon of this kind called a Taniwha, an amphibious being, on land a lizard, in water au eel, or shark, or sea monster. It a mother strangled her child it became a Taniwha — of this monster they were in great dread; he did all the mischiei; if a canoe was upset he turned it over; if a wound was received it was the bite of a Taniwha. Their goda were not possessed of moral attributes — beings to be loved; they were demons to be dreaded; easily offended; punishing the ino6t trivial offences. Their rude mythology filled earth and air and

sea with demons. The sentiments of Milton describes it — Millions of spiritual creatures Walk the earth unseen, Both wnen we wake and when we sleep. They believed themselves surrounded by invisible beings; they saw in the common occurrences of . every day the movements of mighty Bpirits; they heard the voices of the gods in the ocean's roar and the tempest's blast, in the evening breeze and the midnight storm. The mountain, the lonely dell, the desolate rock, the deep forest, were all regarded as the abodes of these invisible beings. There was no lack of deities. The Gospel brought them a great deliverance when it made known to them the one true and living Jehovah..