Origins

 

Sometime about the 1850s a broadsheet was printed in England of Pretty Caroline. In 1908, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams collected the song Pretty Caroline from a Mrs Powell of Herefordshire. In 1923, he included this tune in his English Folk Song Suite, for military bands.

Brass bands gave concerts in New Zealand city parks in the 1920s, while Rudyard Kipling and Eileen Duggan both published verse about tuis and kowhai in that decade also.

Kipling -
      Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom,
      Buy the kowhai's gold
      Flung for gift on Taupo's face,
      Sign that spring is come

Duggan -
      Would you, remembering, tell them of the Tui?
      Wild, wild and blinding is his lightest note.
      They- they never heard him, swinging on a flax-flower,
      Mad with the honey and the noon in his throat.
      They say that in the old days stately rangatiras
      Slit his tongue, and made him speak instead of sing;
      We would rather see him shining and gold-dusted,
      From a morning kowhai flinging wide the spring.

So my guess is that sometime in the 1920s A G Hall read these poems, heard a brass band playing Vaughan Williams' Folk Song Suite, and wrote the Homeland Aotearoa lyrics.

A handwritten choral score with harmonies arranged by N L Brownlee has been located by David Dell. Possibly this arrangement was made in about 1950 (?)

I have received emails from those who saw the sheet music and learnt the song at schools in the early 1950s. "I recall singing this at school (Richmond Road, Auckland) in 1953 and, I think, it was not new then."

This song was printed in the 1960 Pupils Song Book for the NZ Department of Education. A. G. Hall is given there as the writer of these words.

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Sister Mary Koska's music lesson

"I was in about Standard 2 (Year 4) when I heard Sister Mary Koska running through a song about New Zealand with a senior class. The song had a beautiful harmony and ended with the words "Our Homeland Aotearoa".

Anyway, when it came time for my class to learn a new song we were taught another stirring British song and I rapidly lost interest to the point where I was made to remain behind after class, which usually signalled the strap. I was given the opportunity to explain myself and when I said that the song was boring and I wanted to learn the one about Aotearoa, there was a pause and then Sister Koska told me to report to the Convent after school...needless to say I thought that Father Hayes or Father Donnelly were going to deal with me.

After an entire day spent in silent terror I waited for the bell to be rung at three o'clock and then walked over to the Convent where the nuns lived. Sister Koska met me at the door and took me into the first room on the right, which was her music room.

She then opened the piano and took out the sheet music and taught me how to sing the song...It was the first Kiwi folk song I ever learned.

Thank you Sister Mary Koska."

FULL STORY

Sister Mary Koska

Anne Kuklinski, the eldest daughter of Jacob and Mary Kuklinski, was born in Inglewood in 1890. She joined Our Lady of the Missions,  taught children in Northland, and died in Napier in 1969.

And also thanks to . . .

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During a search for the origns of the lyrics sent in by Mike Subritzky, this 1950s Tui /Kowhai song also came to light.

How glorious is the Kowhai Our springtime's golden shower The brightest promise of July New Zealand's national flower Then rapidly does the Tui The Kowhai nectar sip Call, chuckle and flit with glee And into each flower dip How handsome is our Parson bird With his tufted white cravat Clear as a bell his notes are heard For his mate to answer back Each year we watch our Kowhai tree And as the buds appear Our hearts are glad that soon there'll be A Tui's call to hear