In this case the loss of her finery seems to trouble the girl a good deal more than the loss of her lover.  In another ode cited by Shortland a deserted girl, after referring to her tearful eyes, winds up with the light-hearted

     Now that you are absent in your native land,
     The day of regret will, perhaps, end.

There is a suggestion of Sappho in the last of these odes I shall cite: 

“Love does not torment forever.  It came on me like the fire which rages sometimes at Hukanai.  If this (beloved) one is near me, do not suppose, O Kiri, that my sleep is sweet.  I lie awake the live-long night, for love to prey on me in secret.

     “It shall never be confessed, lest it be heard of by
     all.  The only evidence shall be seen on my cheeks.

“The plain which extends to Tauwhare:  that path I trod that I might enter the house of Rawhirawhwi.  Don’t be angry with me, O madam [addressed to Rawhirawhwi’s wife]; I am only a stranger.  For you there is the body (of your husband).  For me there remains only the shadow of desire.”

“In the last two lines,” writes Shortland, “the poetess coolly requests the wife of the person for whom she acknowledges an unlawful passion not to be angry with her, because ’she—­the lawful wife—­has always possession of the person of her husband; while hers is only an empty, Platonic sort of love.’  This is rather a favorite sentiment, and is not unfrequently introduced similarly into love-songs of this description.”

THE WOOING-HOUSE

It is noticeable that these love-poems are all by females, and most frequently by deserted females.  This does not speak well for the gallantry or constancy of the men.  Perhaps they lacked those qualities to offset the feminine lack of coyness.  In the first of our Maori stories the maiden swims to the man, who calmly awaits her, playing his horn.  In the second, a man is simultaneously proposed to by two girls, before he has time to come off his perch on the tree.  This arouses a suspicion which is confirmed by E. Tregear’s revelations regarding Maori courtship (Journ.  Anthrop.  Inst., 1889): 

“The girl generally began the courting.  I have often seen the pretty little love-letter fall at the feet of a lover—­it was a little bit of flax made into a sort of half-knot—­’yes’ was made by pulling the knot tight—­’no’ by leaving the matrimonial noose alone.  Now, I am sorry to say, it is often thrown as an invitation for love-making of an improper character.  Sometimes in the Whare-Matoro (the wooing-house), a building in which the young of both sexes assemble for play, songs, dances, etc., there would be at stated times a meeting; when the fires burned low a girl would stand up in the dark and say, ’I love So-and-so, I want him for my husband,’ If he coughed (sign of assent), or said ‘yes’