The Little Waiata That Ran Away       

Little Brown Jug is an 1850s Philadelphia drinking song satirizing
Appalachian alcoholics. It was made popular in New Zealand by Mitch
Miller and His Gang in 1958.

My wife and I lived all alone

In a little log hut we called our own;

She loved gin and I loved rum,

I tell you what, we'd lots of fun.

Lots of fun! But have you ever had a close look at the translation of

the Maori words sung to this alcoholics' tune?

He continually returns to me

The spirit of my beloved,

From Cape Reinga, to embrace

This skin of mine.

Cape Reinga, at the northern tip of New Zealand, is the jumping off

place of the spirits of the dead and "Hoki Hoki" was a lament written

in 1918 by a very sensitive Maori composer, Paraire Tomoana, for those

Maori women whose loved ones had been lost in battle during World

War I. (Begg 1940; Te Wiata 1975)

Hoea ra te waka nei

Hoea, hoea ki te pae

Ma te poi e karawhiu

      E rahui i te pai.

This chorus in Maori differed from the chorus in English, with Tomoana's original text translating as follows:

Paddle this canoe

Sail on towards the horizon.

May the beat of the poi

Keep up morale.

The image of everybody rowing their canoe in unison expressed the

need for all to work together in order to end the war.

"Hoea Ra Te Waka Nei" was a very popular tune, but by the 1930s

all reference to the First World War had been removed. For example,

my Irish-born Aunty May had worked with Maori in the remote upper

regions of the Whanganui River in the late 1920s and had ridden on

the river with young girls paddling dugout canoes. I learnt this version

from her in the 1940s, after she had moved to the city to work.

Come oh maidens, welcome here

You in all the world most dear

Sweetest voices draw you near

Come oh maidens, come

Chorus:

Gaily our canoe shall glide

Flowing o'er the rolling tide

Twirling pois shall lay beside

Til we reach our home.

For Pakeha (New Zealanders of British descent) like my aunt, the song

now evoked nostalgia for an idyllic rural past.

In the 1950s, the tune of "Hoea Ra" became known worldwide

when David Smith of Christchurch put new words to what he called

"an old Maori folk melody" (Smith and Connelly 1952) . Smith made a

fortune when "A Mother as Lovely as You" was sung all over the world

on old folks' radio programs.

Since I left your tender care

Though I've travell'd everywhere

In this world I never knew

A mother as lovely as you.

By the mid-1960s, the thousands of Maori who had moved from the back country to the cities gave a new meaning to the first verse and chorus of "Hoea Ra Te Waka Nei." This was a generation of young Maori who had been born in the cities, many of whom did not know about their tribal roots.

Being cut off from traditional ways of life meant that the children of the urban migrants lacked a sense of tribal and Maori identity (Meredith 2006), and so another World War II song encouraging tribes to work together for the war effort, "Hoea, Hoea Ra," was modified to remind the young urban Maori that they were still united by all being descended from those who had sailed in the Great Fleet of seven voyaging waka (large Polynesian sailing vessels) from Eastern Polynesia to New Zealand 700 years ago.

An altered first verse of "Hoea Ra Te Waka Nei" was then appended to this Great Fleet song (Archer 2006):

Hoea ra te waka nei

Hoea, hoea ki te pai.

Ma te poi e karawhiu

Kia rere tika pai.

Here is Toby Rikihana's translation with the changes highlighted

      Paddle this canoe

Sail on towards the common good.

May the beat of the poi

Indicate the right direction. (1988)

For the newly urbanized Maori, the metaphors from the past now

guided them into the future, encouraging them to work in unison to

establish new community centres in the cities.

He Puru Taitama

The song was composed by Kingi Tahiwi, who was born in Otaki

in 1883 to parents who were active in both brass band and choral

activities. In 1909, Tahiwi was working for an Otaki law firm. He wanted to marry a very attractive young Maori woman, Jane Armstrong, but he was a slightly-built office worker, and there was much competition for her favors from the muscular young farm workers in the area. to remind her of his capable young male body, as well as bright mind he wrote this song, putting it to a very energetic brass band tune.

He puru taitama e, he puru taitama hoki!

He puru taitama, he puru tukituki

He puru taitama e.

Ka haere taua e, ki runga Otaki hoki?

Kei reira taua, whaka-rite-rite ai

whaka-oti-oti ai e

This may be translated as:

I'm a young bullock, a young bullock indeed!

A vigorous young man, a thrusting bull!

Aye! A real young bullock!

How about you and I going, away beyond Otaki?

And then the two of us can find out

How things end up.

This frankly sexual but serious song remained private until Kingi's

brother and sisters started singing jazz songs that were more sexually

explicit than previous morality allowed. In 1930 their recording of

"He Puru Taitama" was distributed by Parlophone (Tahiwi 1998) and

quickly taken up by other Maori bands.

During World War ll, Les Cleveland collected many New Zealand 
soldiers' songs, including this bawdy variant of He Puru Taitama" 
sung in Italy by Maori infantrymen. 

Epo i taitai e, e poitaitai e! 
E po i taitai, e po i tukituki! 
E po i taitai e! 

This may be translated as: 

At night up high, eh, at night up high, eh! 
At night up high, at night thrusting! 
At night up high, ehl 

When I phoned Les Cleveland in 2005, he said he had no further 
details about that song, because a German shell had blown up the truck with his notebook in it! But post-war usage indicates that the soldiers had used it as a salty commentary to leis explicit love songs. Certainly, Pakeha ex-servicemen who had fought in Italy used the chorus that way.

The workings of oral radition and ignorance of the meaning of 
Tomoana's lyrics have created a strange path for this song. Maori 
people sing variants of this song: "E Po I Taitai E He Meriana," 
and "Purari Pukumimi." Non-Maori people guessing at the spelling 
when transcribing from oral sources have produced such variants as 
    Hepuratai,
    Epo e tai tai e,
    Epo e tai tai e,
    O Epoh E Tai Tai Ey Ah,
    Epo We Te Tie, and
    Epo e tai tai eee.

For example, in 1950 young Al Young heard ex-servicemen in Otago singing: 

        Close the door, they're coming through the window 
        Close the window, they're climbing up the stairs 
        Close the roof they're coming through the ceiling 
        Those Taaa Taa, Tata, Tata are everywhere. 
        Hippo a tai tai eh! Hippo a ai ai eh!
        Hippo a tai tai, hippoa tukituki!
        Hippo a tai tai eh! 

In 2005, Mr. Young recalled: 
I remember it from my father's parties in Tapanui when I was a child. In 
those days, very few Maori lived in West Oago, and...I suspect it may 
have been a spillover from World War ll,..many of my father's mates 
were, like him, returned servicemen.. The whole thing was usually sung 
boisterously once the party was humming. 

Similarly, the Tararua Song Book (Tararua Tramping Club, 1971) shows 
that the chub members had long been singing "Hepuratai" (sic) as a salty chorus after a maudlin country and western song, again with garbled Maori words.

Nobody else could love you better than I

You'll be sorry by and by.

Hepura Tai tame e

O Hepura tai tame ano

Hepura Tai tama, hepura tuki tuki

Hepura tai tama e.

But other users were bowdlerizing the song. In his 1964 instruction

book, Maori Games and Hakas, Alan Armstrong offered it as a poi song

for young women to sing:

He puru taitama,

He puru n' Otaki

He puru tuki tuki e!

Instead of the literal translation of "I'm a young bull / A young bull

from Otaki / A thrusting young bull," Armstrong made the song

socially acceptable by printing the following:

I'm a young playboy,

A playboy from Otaki

Full of the joys of life.

Consequently "He Puru Taitama" appeared on five LPs over the next

ten years, with most of Tahiwi's original words but with sanitized

explanations as to their meaning^.2

With the spread of these socially acceptable record albums, the

song moved overseas. Many Maori songs with good tunes and simple

words are sung in the Pacific Islands as part of tourist entertainers'

repertoires, and a Google search indicates that nonsense variants of

the lewd WWII parody were sung in Hawaii, and then on the main-

land USA.

A posting on The Linguist List states that several American

women recalled singing "E po e tai tai e" (sic) in the mid 1960s when

they were girl scouts. Two of them were told it was "an Indian song

with nonsense words" (Woyth 1998).

Further Googling shows that "Epo e tai tai e" is now in dozens of international infant and scouting song collections all around the world, with the words mistranslated as "I will be happy."

But this version is not being taught to young Maori children. When

I asked older Maori people, they recognized the sexual meaning of
He Puru Taitama and said it was a "cheeky party song."  One young man from Ruatoria, a Maori-speaking community on the isolated East Coast, volunteered a version he and his mates sing there at parties:

Purari pukumimi e

Purari pukumimi hoki.

Ka inu waipiro

Ka kai tarukino

Hoki titahataha e.

This translates as:

My bloody bladder

It's ready to bloody burst.

When y'drink booze

And do drugs

Y’get really lop-sided.

Other popular songs with Western tunes and Maori words have changed in ways similar to the three examples I have presented here. "Po Atarau" became the world-wide hit song, "Now is the Hour." "Po Karekare Ana" became "Sailing Away," while "Tomo Mai," a heartbreaking welcome home song for the survivors of the Maori Battalion, became Howard Morrison's revved-up "Hoki Mai."(3)

They all share the common feature of starting as simple, rhythmical Western

tunes to which emotional Maori lyrics were attached. In some cases,

the songs have developed new lyrics in English. And in many cases,

Maori singers modified the lyrics and intensified the emotions in the

songs because of the separations and bereavements of WWI and WWII.

Other people have been caught up by those emotions, and many New

Zealanders, both Maori and Pakeha, can belt out a verse of the Maori

lyrics with only a vague understanding of their meaning.

Waiouru, New Zealand.
2007

Notes

1. Musical notation and audio files of three songs are NO LONGER available on the Journal of Folklore Research website at http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/.

2. A Treasury of Maori Songs (1966) ; Inia Te Wiata- Festival of Maori Song ( 1966) ;

Haere Mai - Welcome (1968); Discovering New Zealand (1969); and New Zealand's Maori Theatre (1970).

3. Full details of these variations, and others, can be found on my website at

https://folksong.org.nz/waiata.html

Published

Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 44, No. 2/3 (May - Dec., 2007), pp. 239-247