MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1939, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

SANITARY? (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Only 70 years ago I remember how wc country lads shocked our parents at the evening meal after a day spent in the Maori Pa with our dusky youngplayfellows. where we learned by their example that the sons and daughters of the Rangatira (chief, man or woman), the Tohunga (priest), and their children were privileged to drink audibly, and to hold the bones of a bird in both hands while they gnawed the meat with the same noise, Ihe common ueople and their descendants ate and drank “with silent indignity” and were permitted to use one hand in the process. This sounds too ridiculous today, yet even ten years later I heard this privilege contested angrily in the Rangitikei Hotel by Ihmia te Hakeke and Utiku Marumaru. Chiefs ol the Ngatiapa. whose dignified manner in all other respects proclaimed their high descent. Only the (car of losing the custom of the whole Hapu (tribe) caused Ihe landlord to capitulate. Discussing this strange analogy With Utiku in after years, he said: “You Pakeha people do not understand our sacred laws. This custom is a tribute lo the memory- of a God. Can you similarly- explain the action ol your housewife who washes her dirty hands and mixes her pudding m the same bowl? She washes fish from the river or the sea in the tub where the dn-.y linen had soaked all night. You all eat drink and sleep in the same room or house. Is it not these unsanitary pract ices which earn your common reproach to our harmless sounds—“you dirty pig”—answer me that.