All these songs are accompanied by gesticulations more or less violent and in that which is known as E’ Haka the bodily exertion is extreme. The singers sit down in a circle, throw off their upper mats, and sing in concert, accompanying the song with the wildest imaginable gestures, squinting and turning up their eyes so as to show nothing but the whites.
Of musical instruments they have but very vague and faint ideas. Even the drum, which is perhaps the instrument that has the widest range through the world, is unknown to the native New Zealander. Drums resound in all the islands of the Pacific, but the New Zealander never indulges himself in a drumming. The sole really musical instrument which he possesses is a sort of fife made out of human bone. Generally, the flute is formed from the thigh-bone of a slain enemy; and when this is the case, the Maori warrior prizes the instrument inordinately, and carries it suspended to the tiki which he wears slung on his breast.
There are certainly two noise-producing instruments, which have no right to be honored with the title of musical instruments. These are the war bell and the war trumpet.
The former is called the war bell in default of a better word. It consists of a block of hard wood about six feet long and two thick, with a deep groove in the centre. This “bell” is suspended horizontally by cords, and struck by a man who squats on a scaffold under it. With a stick made of heavy wood he delivers slow and regular strokes in the groove, the effect being to produce a most melancholy sound, dully booming in the stillness of the night. The war bell is never sounded by day, the object being to tell the people inside the pah, or village, that the sentinel is awake, and to tell any approaching enemy that it would be useless for him to attempt an attack by surprise. Its native name is Pahu.
The war trumpet is called Putara-putara. It is a most unwieldly instrument, at least seven feet in length. It is hollowed out of a suitably-shaped piece of hard wood, and an expanding mouth is given to it by means of several pieces of wood lashed together with flaxen fibre, and fitted to each other like the staves of a cask. Toward the mouth-piece it is covered with the grotesque carvings of which the New Zealanders are so fond. It is only used on occasions of alarm, when it is laid over the fence of the pah, and sounded by a strong-lunged native. The note which the trumpet produces is a loud roaring sound, which, as the natives aver, can be heard, on a calm night, the distance of several miles. In fact, the sound appears to be very much the same as that which is produced by the celebrated Blowing Stone of Wiltshire.
In some places a smaller trumpet is used in time of war. The body of this trumpet is always made of a large shell, generally that of a triton, and the mode of blowing it differs according to the locality. The simplest kind of shell-trumpet is that which is in use throughout the whole of the Pacific Islands. It is made by taking a large empty shell, and boring a round hole on one side near the point. The shell is blown like a flute, being placed horizontally to the lips, and the air directed across the aperture. In fact, it exactly resembles in principle the horn and ivory trumpets of Africa, which are shown on a preceding page.
There is, however, in the British Museum a much more elaborate form of trumpet, which is blown with a mouth-piece. In this case the point of the shell has been removed and a wooden mouth-piece substituted for it, so that it is blown at the end, like trumpets in our own country.
The dances of the New Zealander are almost entirely connected with war and will therefore be mentioned when we come to treat of that subject.
The mode of salutation at parting and meeting is very curious, and to an European sufficiently ludicrous. When two persons meet who have not seen each other for some time, it is considered a necessary point of etiquette to go through the ceremony called tangi. The “g,” by the way, is pronounced hard, as in the word “begin.” They envelope themselves in their mats, covering even their faces, except one eye, squat on the ground opposite each other, and begin to weep copiously. They seem to have tears at command, and they never fail to go through the whole of the ceremony as often as etiquette demands it. Having finished their cry, they approach each other, press their noses together for some time, uttering the while, a series of short grunts! Etiquette is now satisfied and both parties become very cheerful and lively, chatting and laughing as if there had never been such a thing as a tear in existence.
Mr. Angas tells a ludicrous story of a tangi which he once witnessed. A woman was paddling a very small canoe, and fell in with the exploring party, who were in two large canoes. Seeing some friends on board of the large canoes, she ran her little vessel between them, and began a vigorous tangi.