Kimble [Kimball] Bent An Unusual European Who Deserted The British Army And Joined The Hau Hau #5
We left Kimble having been given his first wife and being absorbed into the ways of the Maori.
Bent was now fully received into the tribe, had a Maori name given to him. It was “Ringiringi,” a name he bore for two or three years until the war-chief Titokowaru rechristened him “Tu-nui-amoa.”
The origin of this name “Ringiringi” may be explained, as an example of the way in which the Maoris so frequently acquire new names often from very trivial incidents.
It was a contraction of “Te Wai-ringiringi,” which was one of Tito te Hanataua's nicknames, bestowed upon the chief about two years previously.
A party of Ngati-Maniapoto Maoris from the King Country were at that time on a visit to Taiporohenui, where a large war-council of the rebel tribes was held.
Tito te Hanataua was one of the Taranaki orators, and as he taki'd [strutted] up and down, spear in hand, in the usual energetic manner of the Maori speech-maker, he spoke so rapidly and fluently that the Kingites dubbed him “Te Wai-ringiringi,” meaning “The Pouring Water,” because his words poured from his lips like water.
Tito was rather proud of this nickname, and his bestowal of it upon Bent was in a sense a mark of favour.
Bent at this time was a thin, rather weak-looking man, and his slimness was made the subject of a haka chorus amongst the people, a little song for which his one-eyed wife was responsible. These were the words:
“Kite kai, e Ringi,
Kai poroporo te manawa,
Te iti to hope,
Whakapai Angoré\e.”
(“Eat away, O Ringi,
Eat your fill of poroporo berries
To make you strong again,
Lest your waist be small and weak,
Eat to become a fine Englishman!”)
The poroporo is a forest shrub which bears an abundance of large red berries, a favourite food of the tui
and pigeons,
which become very fat on this rich bird-fare.
The white man, however, as he told his wahine,[woman] preferred to leave the poroporo
to the tuis, and to fill out his attenuated waist, which the people looked upon with some amusement, with good Maori pork and potatoes.
with thanks to son-of-satire for the banner
