In
the 1920s, little girls in the backblocks of Taranaki still
lived in fear, or perhaps hope, of being kidnapped by fierce
Maori warriors, just like Queenie Perrett
was in 1874. This song reassured them that those Maori
warriors were now as exinct as the Moa.
At first glance, this looks like a cutesy kid's song, but
like the Greek myth of Leda seduced by a swan, it has deeper
levels.
Dulcie wandered far away,
In the bush one summer's day
Hills she climbed and creeks she crossed,
'Til it struck her she was lost
Then she found a little track,
Which she hoped would lead her back
Suddenly the bushes stirred.
Out there stepped a great big bird.
"Oh" she cried, "Good gracious me!
'Tis a moa that I see!
Please don't eat me, moa dear!"
Said the moa, "Never fear!
You've been told that I'm extinct...
But I'm not!" And here he winked
"If on my back you take a ride
We can travel far and wide!"
Down
he knelt upon the track
Dulcie climbed up on his back
Like the wind away they sped
Dulcie's hat blew from her head
Faster 'til she thought she'd drop
"Stop!" she cried, "Oh please do stop!"
Then she woke up with a scream
Glad to find it all a dream.
Performance
My
Aunty Eileen, who was raised on a back-country Taranaki farm,
taught me this song in 1945, when I was 4 years old.(JA) She
sung it unaccompanied, with a lot of theatrical gestures and
eye movements.
These days, when I have a group of litle kids at a
concert, I ask one of them,
-What's your name?
-Marge. (...Charlene, Robyn, Shawn...)
-Oh I know a song about a little girl named Marge! Have you
ever been for a walk out in the bush?
-Ye-es
-Uww! perhaps you are the Marge this song was written about
then! Marge she wandered far away...
Then I get a couple of kids out to mime the actions while
we all sing it again... and again...
Dulcie on
Record
This
was recorded by the Fernfire Singers in 1968 (Sweat in the
sun, mate! ). But mostly it has been a song that rural mothers
have passed on to their daughters.
My thanks to the families of Jill Polston and Tim Campbell for
their versions of this song.
Queenie
Perrett
William Perrett was a settler at Lepperton, 13 km east of New
Plymouth. In 1874, he was contracted to dig a cutting for a
new railway line through Sentry Hill, a hillock which had been
the site of a redoubt in the land wars.
50 Maori lay buried on its slopes after being killed by
settlers in a battle there 10 years previously. The
relatives of those buried there asked him to stop digging,
but he refused.
So when his 8 year old daughter Queenie went to off into
the bush to bring back the family's wandering cows for
milking, they abducted her.
They took her deep into the King Country, and for many
years colonists there kept a look-out for this
fine-featured, blue-eyed, blond girl with a burn scar on her
neck (from an accident in infancy) .
Queenie
Ngoungou
But she had been taken to the gum fields of Northland by a
nomadic group of Maori gumdiggers.
In 1886 she married Ngoungou, a visitor from Whakatane, and
lived with him at Whakatane for the rest of her life.
In 1926, by sheer chance, her sister's daughter recognised
her on the street of Whakatane: "A blue-eyed blond woman in
Maori clothing who looked just like my own mother! And with
that scar on her neck!"
She had no memory at all of her life before the gumfields,
and had forgotten how to speak English.
Bibliography:
Miram
Macgregor, "Petticoat Pioneers, Book Two" pp. 149-160
AH & AW Reed (1975)
The Moa
Moa
is the common name for an extinct flightless bird of New
Zealand related to the kiwi, the emu, the cassowary and the
ostrich. The 20+ species of moa ranged in size from that of
a turkey to the 4 metres high Dinornis maximus.
The moa had a short stout bill and was wingless and even
the shoulder girdle was lacking in most species. Remains
preserved in caves and bogs include bones, pieces of skin,
feathers, and egg shells.
Although the birds were hunted intensively by the Maoris
in the 12th to 14th centuries, the reason for the moas'
extinction is not precisely known.
