MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 October 1939, Page 8

MAORI MEMORIES

THE LONELY WORSHIPPER.

(Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”)

An old Maori Chief whose life’s companion had long since gone past, came out from his tidy little whare lined with toi canes, having soft Takapau (flax mats) on the clay floor, and invited us in for a warm at his smokeless central fire of dried Kowhai, and a hot roast potato. Though he spoke our language fairly well, not a word of it did he or we use. Only in his mother tongue could he safely convey his feelings. Told in broken English, its force and bitterness would have savoured of profanity. In the simplicity of his Maori language it was the pathetic pleading of a hungry soul. ' You hnow that pretty little church next door, with its flower garden and high barbed wire and locked gate to keep the Maori out. In our day we would simply have proclaimed its contents Tapu and its open door Welcome. That land was once my living. There I worked and earned my food, my health, and my restful nights, until they persuaded me to give it to 'the cause of humanity.’ Then their High Priest (Ariki Rewa) consecrated it (Mea whakatapu) ten years ago, and neither I nor my people have ever yet been asked within its Tatau Tapu (sacred door). It is true that we cannot wholly abandon our inherited and instinctive worship of all things in Nature, the Sky, the Earth, the Ocean, and the Forest. Yet we include all mankind as their product; why then should you blackball us because we pray from our hearts yet silently: “O Rangi, Rongo, Tane, Tu Be with us still, however few.' ”