This karakia is still in use with the Arawa tribe in cases of difficult parturition. When such cases occur, it is concluded that the woman has committed some fault—some breach of the tapu, which is to be discovered by the matakite (=seer). The father of the child then plunges in the river, while the karakia is being repeated, and the child will generally be born ere ever he returns.
The following form of karakia is also used by members of the same tribe in similar cases:—
O! Hine-teiwaiwa, release Tuhuruhuru,
O! Rupe, release your nephew.
The ancestors of the father of the child are then invoked by name. First the elder male line of ancestors, commencing with an ancestor who lived in Hawaiki and terminating with the living representative of that line. Then follows a repetition of the ancestral line next in succession, and the third in succession, if the child be not born.[1] After which the tohunga addressing the unborn child says, "Come forth. The fault rests with me. Come forth." The tohunga continues thus—
Unravel the tangle, unravel the crime,
Untie manuka, let it be loosed.
Distant though Rangi,
He is reached.
If the child be not now born. Tiki is invoked thus—
Tiki of the heap of earth.
Tiki scraped together,
When hands and feet were formed,
First produced at Hawaiki.
- ↑ In the Maori MS., of which the above is a translation, the names of the ancestors of the chief of the tribe referred to are given in genealogical order, but are omitted here.
