KIRIKI HORI

PAUL DIAMOND

When the ‘champion Herculean wrestler and weight lifter’ Dr John Theo Hatzopulos visited New Zealand in 1899, his Gisborne appearance was promoted in te reo Māori as well as English. Hatzopulos, who claimed to be able to ‘allow two persons, selected haphazard from the audience, to break with sledge-hammers a stone weighing 200lb [pounds] resting on his bare head’, was known as ‘Professor Greek George’—‘Kiriki Hori’ in the poster’s Māori version. ‘Kiriki Hori’ illustrates how words are transliterated into Māori, creating ‘loan’ words using the Māori alphabet, which has fewer characters than English.

The handbill is one of the items listed in Books in Māori 1815–1900 Ngā Tānga Reo Māori, a bibliography published by the Turnbull Library and Reed Publishing in 2004. It records all known books and other items published in Māori during that time, beginning with the elementary Māori-language primer printed in Sydney in 1815, A Korao no New Zealand. The primer is an example of the items produced by Christian missionaries, who had to learn te reo Māori in order to bring their message to the New Zealanders, as Māori were then known.

In addition to religious texts, the collection includes dictionaries, government publications, commercial publications and ephemera such as the Kiriki Hori handbill. Some, including this handbill, were collected by Alexander Turnbull himself. Turnbull used experts such as Bishop Herbert W. Williams as an agent to find items for his collection. Herbert Williams was a grandson of Bishop William Williams, author of the first two editions of the Williams Dictionary of the Maori Language, first published in 1844 and the standard Māori–English dictionary for 150 years. (Herbert edited the fifth edition and his father edited the third and fourth editions.)

Herbert also produced a bibliography of written Māori, which Turnbull staff revised to become Books in Māori. The library has begun digitising the items listed in Books in Māori, starting with those for which it holds the only known copy, including the Kiriki Hori handbill.

As the legal scholar Māmari Stephens has noted, these early publications show how Māori was a language of civil engagement and discourse, and are an inspiration for how this could happen again. The library’s collection is a major part of an Aotearoa-wide collection of te reo Māori material, described by Roger Maaka, a professor of Māori and indigenous studies, as arguably the largest of any indigenous language and a key resource for researchers, students and those interested in language revitalisation.

DESCRIPTION Handbill in English and te reo Māori advertising the Gisborne appearance of Kiriki Hori, Professor Greek George, the champion Herculean wrestler and weightlifter, June 1899

REFERENCE Printed Māori Collection BIM 1537 (Eph-B-Variety-1899-01-1; Eph-B-VARIETY-1899-01-2) The te reo Māori version of this 1899 poster shows the language’s adaptation to a bilingual milieu, with the ready adoption of transliterated English creating loan words.