pulls out two stalks of the Pteris esculenta, from which the fibres of the root
must be removed, and beating them together over the patient’s head, says this
chant. It is entitled, “A prayer for the sick man, when his head aches: to Atua
this prayer is offered, that the sick man may become well.”
On the occasion of a chiefs illness, all his kith and kin gather around his house,
and give way to the loudest lamentations, in which the invalid is careful to join.
When the weeping and wailing capacities of one village have been exhausted he
is carried to another, and the process is repeated. But in New Zealand, as
elsewhere, the common lot cannot be averted by sorrowing humanity; the sick
man dies; and then all that remains to the survivors is to show their respect and
regret by such funeral pomp as they are able to devise. They assemble round the
dead body, after it has been equipped in its bravest attire, and indulge in the most
violent demonstrations of grief,—partly feigned, no doubt, but partly sincere.
This luxury of woe, however, is chiefly accorded to the women, who display that
extravagance of passion we are accustomed to regard as characteristic of the
Southern nations. They throw themselves upon the ground, wrap their faces and
bodies in their mantles, shriek and sob aloud, wave their arms frantically in the
air, and finally gash and scar their skin with long, deep cuts, which they fill in
with charcoal until they become indelible records of the loss they have sustained.
Funeral orations, full of the most vehement eulogies, and interrupted by
complaints and reproaches against the dead man for his unkindness in going
away from them, are incessantly delivered. These ceremonies completed, they
place the corpse in a kind of coffin, along with various emblems of the rank of
the departed, and leave it to decay.
The process of decomposition is completed in about seven or eight months; the
ceremony of the hahunga then takes place. The friends and relatives assemble;
the bones are removed from the coffin, and cleaned; a supply of provisions is
passed around; a new series of funeral panegyric is spoken; and the tiki, merai,
and other symbols of the departed chieftain’s headship are handed over to his
eldest son, who is thus invested with his father’s power and privileges.
The place where the dead body lies while undergoing decomposition, the waki-
tapu, as it is called, is frequently distinguished by peculiar signs, and the
neighbourhood left uninhabited. Mr. Angas describes a visit which he paid to the
village of Huriwonua. Its chief had died about six weeks before the visit, and
Mr. Angas, on arriving there, found it entirely deserted. “From the moment the
chief was laid beneath the upright canoe, on which were inscribed his name and
rank, the whole village, he says, became strictly tapu, or sacred, and not a native,