MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 August 1940, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

TAKARO (PLAY). (Recorded by J.H.S., of Palmerston North, for the “Times-Age.”) Flying kites (manu) named after birds, was one of the favourite games of the Maori boys and girls. The lace bark (houhere) the inner lace-like bark of the houhere was the lightest and most suitable material known. Kites of this were cleverly fashioned in the shape and size of a man. Shells of paua to glisten in the sun and rattle in the wind or by jerking the string were attached to the hands and feet of the dummy kite. In emergencies or tribal fights these “birds” carried well defined signals to fiendly tribes when the wind favoured their release.

Hoops (pirori) made of slender vines then stiffened by drying near the fire, were driven back and forth between two lines of players, who played for hours with seldom a fall of the swiftly driven objects. Whip tops (kaitaka), skipping ropes (piu), humming tops (takiri), cat’s cradle (maui), toboggan slide (papareti), down hill on a wet clay track, even the draft board (mu) and other well known European games were in universal use among the Maoris before Captain Cook came. This and other coincidences indicate contact at some remote period with an unknown civilisation.

The swing on ropes (morere) on the edge of cliff, was a daring and dangerous game in which an occasional death did not deter others from indulging.

To reconcile the defeated tribe aftet a battle, a small dry gourd (hue) with a peg thrust through it for the string to be wound, and with a circular board decorated with paua shell to act as a weighted balance, made a mournful humming noise in unison with the pitiful cries of the defeated warriors.

Many of these games were directed by women and played by children to accompany each move of the bands of workmen.