The Umu Kotore.

The umu kotore was the marriage feast of the Maori—that is to say, of the aristocratic marriage before mentioned. It was at this function that certain invocations were repeated by the priest over the couple.

In the first place, the priest repeats a prayer or invocation over the twain to preserve them in health and prosperity, to ward off from them all evil, physical or otherwise. After this the pair enjoyed the rights of married people. The marriage feast is then prepared, and is known as umu kotore, or kai kotore. Probably the former term is more correctly applied to the ritual pertaining to this function and the latter expression to the actual food. Umu means a steam-oven, in which food was prepared by the neolithic Maori; but the term is also used to denote a rite as performed by a priest—e.g., umu pongipongi = a magic rite to destroy man. Kotore means “the lower end, buttocks, anus, tail of a bird.” The word reperepe (and tareperepe) also means the buttocks, hence the above feast is sometimes termed kai reperepe (kai = food).

I asked an old man why the word kotore is applied to a marriage. His answer was brief and convincing, “Ko te take i kiia ai he kai kotore, i moe ko tona kotore i te tane ra. Ehara i te mea i moe ko tona mahunga” (“The reason of the feast being called a kai kotore is because the woman's kotore married the husband. It was not her head that married (slept or cohabited with) him”).

The kai kotore is special food, the best procurable, cooked in a separate oven (umu kotore) for the relatives of the young wife. Food was cooked in other ovens for the rest of the assembled people. Only the relatives of the young wife partook of the kai kotore, or kai reperepe, cooked in the umu kotore. The young couple themselves did not eat of the kai kotore. In some cases the wife's younger sisters would decline to eat of the food prepared in the umu kotore, koi purua—i.e., lest they be pukupa, or barren.

Further invocations were repeated by the priest at the umu kotore which constituted a part of the marriage ritual, and gave mana (efficacy, power, prestige) to the ceremony. Another invocation, known as the ohaoha, was then repeated over the couple. This was equivalent to a blessing—in the first place, that the twain might not be assailed by sickness or the shafts of magic, but be preserved in health. It also invoked a state of fruitfulness for the wife, that she might bear children. In the event of the wife being nervous, or afraid of her