Apologies are given for any errors in the translation of this important text. Other writers who are far more knowledgeable in Te Reo have published books about Kikiki, but only one of them has given a translation, and that was of Te Rauparaha's adaptation of it. Hopefully this attempt to show the beauty of a near-forgotten literary and cultural treasure will inspire others to make more polished translations.
James Cowan, who spent his 1870s childhood on the edge of the King Country and who was a fluent speaker of Maori, informs us that Kikiki Kakaka was used as a wedding and peacemaking song, and on examination we find it contains sexually explicit phrases that would be used in a intimate wedding-night song; kau, taku tara, tarawahia, rere ure.
So the method used in translating this chant was to use Williams’ dictionary and the Whakareo online lexicon to find out whether other phrases might also be metaphors for a story of developing sexual intimacy. These phrases were noted.
Kikiki = indistinct, murmuring, an idiot, stuttering => love-talk.
Kakaka = bracken stalks, or a wall made from them.
Kau ana = alone, quite bare, naked.
Tara = mountain peak => genitals, pubic mound, spike, penis.
Pounga
= eclipse => hidden => mysteries.
Te uira ka rarapa = "the lightning flashes" => revealed in a flash of light.
Peru kairiri = "fullness of eyes and lips when angry." But the emotion here is lust, which produces the same facial expression as anger.
Mau au e koro could mean I'm caught up by desire, a noose, or an old man. In the context the first seems the only choice.
Rerarera is in no dictionary, but is presumably an adjective from rera = thighs. So "nga rua rerarera" = the thigh-enclosed cavities?
Kuri (adj.)= musty => musky.
Kakanui = an inferior fern-root. Instead of being floury when cooked, it
is fibrous and bristly, rather like coarse pubic hair.
Ka mate, ka mate; in the context here it seems to refer to the loss of bodily control at sexual climax, scary when it happens the first time.
Ka ora, ka ora;
Sir John Te Heuheu Grace, Tuwharetoa: the History of the Maori People of the Taupo District, 1959
James Cowan, (Tohunga), "The Wisdom of the Maori," The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1 Feb 1935.
In the 1930s the Railways Magazine filled much the same intellectual role as the Listener does today in the 21st century. |