SPOKEN ENGLISH, or The Muse Bemused

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 419, 4 July 1947, Page 15

SPOKEN ENGLISH, or The Muse Bemused

A dozen years or so aGo in Christchurch I would go a Couple of times a week to look at the moa Bones in the museum there. I know a Thing or two about the moa. Not just the bone-and-skinny moa But the sort that Hinnymoa Used to ride, Astride, With meat and feathers (On the bird, I mean, for where there’s Two nouns, folk get confused). Anyway I used ‘To look at this skeleton » With a Latin name too long to speleton This page-and to myself I’d imagine The life of the lasses and lagine Those far off dark and bowery days, ~ (They were dark of course being mowery days). thought Of all the Sport They’d have. These’d be moas to ride Astride. (I did that rhyme before, sorry) And an occasional morry, orry To eat for Sunday dinner. The last named (i.e., the morry orries) can hardly be blamed _For resenting this, and they grew surlier From getting up urlier Only to be absorbed at luncheon With a most distasteful muncheon By some old Maori potentate Who'd slep in late. (Look at any history book For stories of the Mory ories. ey were earlier than the Maoris, were not tattooed, but dau Were killed off and absorbed). Well, as I say, I used to stand Think of Maori days and Maori loreI knew their legends by the score, or even more, galore. There was one all abott A girl called Hinemoa who went out Fishing on a Friday And pone up quite a tidy Bit of landscape, which she Moored to a pig’s bladder, a very fich she Story. And oh, the sweet cadence Of their names, these Maori men and madence. Like for example (and one will be ample To illustrate the aforementioned cadence Like silver dollars falling, though they were padence Sea-shells, not money-but to end this Parenthesis). Like for example, ‘Hinemoa.’ ;

. I do not know a Prettier name. When she got to grow a Little fatter they called her Wahinemoa. She always was a bit of a gad-a Bout, and never sailed without her bladder, (It was a pig’s bladder really Which she could inflate freally With a bike-pump. And I shouldin Wonder if it was the forerunner of bagpipes and black puddin’). Space would never al . Low me to tell you several Other legends in which I am steeply deeped Or rather speetly peeped, tpe know the phrase I am trying to land But which I fear I must abandon For readers curse you If you fail to pursue (So I have been told with some frequence) Your narrative sequence. Well, all this will demonstrate What a spate Of inspiration Will spring just from the contemplation Of moas. Even lawn moas will do, though as I have shown You must have some bone With no flesh on To get the proper historic impression, And thoa lawn moa has wheels and a handle It can’t hold a candle To plain bones; so keep a stack round The, house to give it background. It would seem I departed From the theme I started Upon-and you will wonder I spose Why I chose This subject anyway. Well you see a man just rang me To threaten and harangue me Because my dog had gone into his yarden Buried a bone in his gardenA dirty big bone, And he swore down the phone, : Which set me thinking about them-bones I mean, not phones. And it was all so silly Because rilly I'd like to have busted his cursologue Tust to tell him he had the wrong number

and the wrong dogue.

Augustus