THE DIFFICULT DAYS: Tales Of Pioneer Women

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 20, 10 November 1939, Page 43

THE DIFFICULT DAYS: Tales Of Pioneer Women

T is impossible to read authentic tales of hardship and endurance, of courage and unswerving purpose, without deep response. That is why the crudest scrawl in the diary of a pioneer must always have value. And these were our people. Neither style nor even grammar is necessary to convey what is to be found in this slight book of pioneer memories, (Tales of Pioneer Women. Coldected by the Women’s Institutes of New , Zealand. Whitcombe and Tombs.) * * * * Here is massacre, earthquake, fire, flood, flameand the spirit that goes to the conquering of these things. Here are women-* young, cultivated, beautiful," and again "tall, slender, very fair... large blue eyes . . . dazzling complexion . . . gracious . logical . . ."--who witnessed cannibalism, who dealt successfully with infanticide, and who bore their own children always in fear, often in solitude. And here, later, are young brides brought home on rough bush sledges to raupo huts with. white calico ceilings that "swelled like a ship in full sail." One such, left sitting in the mud of the track with her first-born in her arms waited quietly until her husband discovered his loss and returned. To his agitated, "Why are you sitting there?" she replied demurely, " Oh-Baby and I just love the view from this spot." Here are girls who swing ball dresses from the rafters of a fireless lean-to with saddles for hangers. Here are women who, when earthquake deprived them of all save a snatched-up blanket and "large white frilly nightcap" put up umbrellas for -respectabilities sake! An early morning conversation between husband and wife with the earth heaving beneath them: She: "Get up. Get up. We must get up."

He: "We can’t get up-the floor’s gone." She: "The bed’s here-the floor can’t be gone. Get up and find it." * o a Here are women who "burnt shells for lime to make lime water,’ and, when breast milk failed, fed their babies through "the finger of an old kid glove." Here is one who sat all night in the bush-alone-contemplating the end of her happiness-at eighteen, a wife, a mother, and a widow. When at last day comes and the birds break into song she records, simply, "I began another day." * * Pd Here are friendly warriors who walk 28 miles with pakeha trousers converted into flour sacks to relieve pakeha famine-mischievous brown boys who baptise yellow-crested parrakeets with blood from their fingers in order to get the price of the rarer red ones -of bullock teams which refuse to move from midriver until the right vocabulary of curses be hurled at them-of cows that lap up the last precious drop from the pail of Holy Water. And they could laugh at terror in those days-as these lines of epitaph, written in fun for one of our grandmothers, prove: They munched and crunched Bone, flesh and muscle, And cried " How sweet! How soft! How nice -is Annie Russell! * * *. And at the end is an old lady landed on the West Coast by ’plane. And her comment: " Ah, well. To think the air has been here all the time and it is only now we 4 of using it for travel!" * * * Here is a book of real value. And a book that growing daughter of yours must have at any price.