Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 57

The tears gush from my eyes, My eyelashes are wet with tears; But stay, my tears, within, Lest you should be called mine.

Alas! I am betrothed (literally, my hands are bound); It is for Te Maunee That my love devours me.

But I may weep indeed, Beloved one, for thee, Like Tiniran's lament For his favorite pet Tutunui Which was slain by Ngae.

Alas!

Shortland gives these specimens of the songs that are frequently accompanied by immodest gestures of the body. Some of them are "not sufficiently decent to bear translating." The one marked (4) is interesting as an attempt at hyperbole.

(1)

Your body is at Waitemata, But your spirit came hither And aroused me from my sleep.

(4)

Tawera is the bright star Of the morning.

Not less beautiful is the Jewel of my heart.

(5)

The sun is setting in his cave, Touching as he descends (the Land) where dwells my mate, He who is whirled away To southern seas.

More utilitarian are (6) and (7), in which a woman asks "Who will marry a man too lazy to till the ground for food?" And a man wants to know "Who will marry a woman too lazy to weave garments?" Very unlover-like is the following:

I don't like the habits of woman.

When she goes out-- She _Kuikuis_ She _Koakoas_ She chatters The very ground is terrified, And the rats run away.

Just so.

More poetic are the _waiata_, which are sung without the aid of any action. The following ode was composed by a young woman forsaken by her lover:

Look where the mist Hangs over Pukehina.

There is the path By which went my love.

Turn back again hither, That may be poured out Tears from my eyes.

It was not I who first spoke of love.

You it was who made advances to me When I was but a little thing.

Therefore was my heart made wild.

This is my farewell of love to thee.

A young woman, who had been carried away prisoner from Tuhua, gives vent to her longing in these lines:

"My regret is not to be expressed. Tears like a spring gush from my eyes. I wonder whatever is Te Kaiuku [her lover] doing: he who deserted me. Now I climb upon the ridge of Mount Parahaki; from whence is clear the view of the island Tahua. I see with regret the lofty Taumo, where dwells Tangiteruru. If I were there, the shark's tooth would hang from my ear. How fine, how beautiful, should I look. But see whose ship is that tacking? Is it yours? O Hu! you husband of Pohiwa, sailing away on the tide to Europe.

"O Tom! pray give me some of your fine things; for beautiful are the clothes of the sea-G.o.d.

"Enough of this. I must return to my rags, and to my nothing-at-all."

In this case the loss of her finery seems to trouble the girl a good deal more than the loss of her lover. In another ode cited by Shortland a deserted girl, after referring to her tearful eyes, winds up with the light-hearted

Now that you are absent in your native land, The day of regret will, perhaps, end.

There is a suggestion of Sappho in the last of these odes I shall cite:

"Love does not torment forever. It came on me like the fire which rages sometimes at Hukanai. If this (beloved) one is near me, do not suppose, O Kiri, that my sleep is sweet. I lie awake the live-long night, for love to prey on me in secret.

"It shall never be confessed, lest it be heard of by all. The only evidence shall be seen on my cheeks.

"The plain which extends to Tauwhare: that path I trod that I might enter the house of Rawhirawhwi. Don't be angry with me, O madam [addressed to Rawhirawhwi's wife]; I am only a stranger. For you there is the body (of your husband). For me there remains only the shadow of desire."

"In the last two lines," writes Shortland, "the poetess coolly requests the wife of the person for whom she acknowledges an unlawful pa.s.sion not to be angry with her, because 'she--the lawful wife--has always possession of the person of her husband; while hers is only an empty, Platonic sort of love.' This is rather a favorite sentiment, and is not unfrequently introduced similarly into love-songs of this description."

THE WOOING-HOUSE

It is noticeable that these love-poems are all by females, and most frequently by deserted females. This does not speak well for the gallantry or constancy of the men. Perhaps they lacked those qualities to offset the feminine lack of coyness. In the first of our Maori stories the maiden swims to the man, who calmly awaits her, playing his horn. In the second, a man is simultaneously proposed to by two girls, before he has time to come off his perch on the tree. This arouses a suspicion which is confirmed by E. Tregear's revelations regarding Maori courtship _(Journ. Anthrop. Inst_., 1889):

"The girl generally began the courting. I have often seen the pretty little love-letter fall at the feet of a lover--it was a little bit of flax made into a sort of half-knot--'yes' was made by pulling the knot tight--'no' by leaving the matrimonial noose alone.

Now, I am sorry to say, it is often thrown as an invitation for love-making of an improper character.

Sometimes in the _Whare-Matoro_ (the wooing-house), a building in which the young of both s.e.xes a.s.semble for play, songs, dances, etc., there would be at stated times a meeting; when the fires burned low a girl would stand up in the dark and say, 'I love So-and-so, I want him for my husband,' If he coughed (sign of a.s.sent), or said 'yes' it was well; if only dead silence, she covered her head with her robe and was ashamed. This was not often, as she generally had managed to ascertain (either by her own inquiry or by sending a girl friend) if the proposal was acceptable. On the other hand, sometimes a mother would attend and say 'I want So-and-so for my son.' If not acceptable there was general mocking, and she was told to let the young people have their house (the wooing-house) to themselves. Sometimes, if the unbetrothed pair had not secured the consent of the parents, a late suitor would appear on the scene, and the poor girl got almost hauled to death between them all. One would get a leg, another an arm, another the hair, etc. Girls have been injured for life in these disputes, or even murdered by the losing party."

LIBERTY OF CHOICE AND RESPECT FOR WOMEN

The a.s.sertion that "the girl generally began the courting" must not mislead us into supposing that Maori women were free, as a rule, to marry the husbands of their choice. As Tregear's own remarks indicate, the advances were either of an improper character, or the girl had made sure beforehand that there was no impediment in the way of her proposal. The Maori proverb that as the fastidious Kahawai fish selects the hook which pleases it best, so a woman chooses a man out of many (on the strength of which alone Westermarck, 217, claims liberty of choice for Maori women) must also refer to such liaisons before marriage, for all the facts indicate that the original Maori customs allowed women no choice whatever in regard to marriage. Here the brother's consent had to be obtained, as Shortland remarks (118).

Many of the girls were betrothed in infancy, and many others married at an age--twelve to thirteen--when the word choice could have had no rational meaning. Tregear informs us that if a couple had not been betrothed as children, everyone in the tribe claimed a right to interfere, and the only way the couple could get their own way was by eloping. Darwin was informed by Mantell "that until recently almost every girl in New Zealand who was pretty or promised to be pretty was tapu to some chief;" and we further read that

"when a chief desires to take to himself a wife, he fixes his attention upon her, and takes her, if need be, by force, without consulting her feelings and wishes or those of anyone else."

This is confirmed by William Brown, in his book on the aborigines. But the most graphic and harrowing description of Maori maltreatment of women is given by the Rev. E. Taylor:

"The _ancient and most general way_ of obtaining a wife was for the gentleman to summon his friends and make a regular _taua_, or fight, to carry off the lady by force, and oftentimes with great violence.... If the girl had eloped with someone on whom she had placed her affection, then her father and brother would refuse their consent," and fight to get her back. "The unfortunate female, thus placed between two contending parties, would soon be divested of every rag of clothing, and would then be seized by her head, hair, or limbs," her "cries and shrieks would be unheeded by her savage friends. In this way the poor creature was often nearly torn to pieces. These savage contests sometimes ended in the strongest party bearing off in triumph the naked person of the bride. In some cases, after a long season of suffering, she recovered, to be given to a person for whom she had no affection, in others to die within a few hours or days from the injuries which she had received. But it was not uncommon for the weaker party, when they found they could not prevail, for one of them to put an end to the contest by suddenly plunging his spear into the woman's bosom to hinder her from becoming the property of another."

After giving this account on page 163 of the Maori's "ancient and _most general_ way" of obtaining a wife--which puts him below the most ferocious brutes, since those at least spare their females--the same writer informs us on page 338 that "there are few races who treat their women with more deference than the Maori!" If that is so, it can only be due to the influence of the whites, since all the testimony indicates that the unadulterated Maori--with whom alone we are here concerned--did not treat them "with great respect," nor pay any deference to them whatever. The cruel method of capture described above was so general that, as Taylor himself tells us, the native term for courtship was _he aru aru_, literally, a following or pursuing after; and there was also a special expression for this struggling of two suitors for a girl--_he puna rua_. As for their "great respect"

for women, they do not allow them to eat with the men. A chief, says Angas (II., 110), "will sometimes permit his favorite wife to eat with him, though not out of the same dish." Ellis relates (III., 253) that New Zealanders are "addicted to the greatest vices that stain the human character--treachery, cannibalism, infanticide, and murder." The women caught in battle, as well as the men, were, he says, enslaved or eaten. "Sometimes they chopped off the legs and arms and otherwise mangled the body before they put the victim to death." Concubines had to do service as household drudges. A man on dying would bequeath his wives to his brother. No land was bequeathed to female children. The real Maori feeling toward women is brought out in the answer given to a sister who went to her brothers to ask for a share of the lands of the family: "Why, you're only a slave to blow up your husband's fire."

(Shortland, 119, 255-58.)

MAORI MORALS AND CAPACITY FOR LOVE

When Hawkesworth visited New Zealand with Captain Cook, he one day came accidentally across some women who were fishing, and who had thrown off their last garments. When they saw him they were as confused and distressed as Diana and her nymphs; they hid among the rocks and crouched down in the sea until they had made and put on girdles of seaweeds (456). "There are instances," writes William Brown (36-37), "of women committing suicide from its being said that they had been seen naked. A chief's wife took her own life because she had been hung up by the heels and beaten in the presence of the whole tribe."

Shall we conclude from this that the Maoris were genuinely modest and perhaps capable of that delicacy in regard to s.e.xual matters which is a prerequisite of sentimental love? What is modesty? The _Century Dictionary_ says it is "decorous feeling or behavior; purity or delicacy of thought or manner; reserve proceeding from pure or chaste character;" and the _Encyclopaedic Dictionary_ defines it as "chast.i.ty; purity of manners; decency; freedom from lewdness or un-chast.i.ty." Now, Maori modesty, if such it maybe called, was only skin deep. Living in a colder climate than other Polynesians, it became customary among them to wear more clothing; and what custom prescribes must be obeyed to the letter among all these peoples, be the ordained dress merely a loin cloth or a necklace, or a cover for the back only, or full dress. It does not argue true modesty on the part of a Maori woman to cover those parts of her body which custom orders her to cover, any more than it argues true modesty on the part of an Oriental barbarian to cover her face only, on meeting a man, leaving the rest of her body exposed. Nor does suicide prove anything, since it is known that the lower races indulge in self-slaughter for as trivial causes as they do in the slaughter of others. True modesty, as defined above, is not a Maori characteristic. The evidence on this point is too abundant to quote in full.

Shortland (126-27) describes in detail all of the ceremonies which were in former days the pastimes of the New Zealanders, and which accompanied the singing of their _haka_ or "love-songs," to which reference has already been made. In the front were seated three elderly ladies and behind them in rows, eight or ten in a row, and five or six ranks deep, sat "_the best born young belles of the town_"

who supplied the poem and the music for the _haka_ pantomime:

"The _haka_ is not a modest exhibition, but the reverse; and, on this occasion, two of the old ladies who stood in front ... accompanied the music by movements of the arms and body, their postures being often disgustingly lascivious. However, they suited the taste of the audience, who rewarded the performers at such times with the applause they desired.... It was altogether as unG.o.dly a scene as can well be imagined."

The same author, who lived among the natives several years, says (120) that