Ramifications

I love ramifications. They always seem to exist and if you follow them they become more and more fascinating. Here's an example.

This plant (weed if you like) is sow thistle aka hare's lettuce. It does indeed belong to the lettuce family and the leaves make a very acceptable salad or cooked vegetable. It's growing on some rough land close to the house and is one of the few plants still flowering.  I looked up its details and found that it has a variety of traditional medicinal properties in addition to its culinary uses. It has spread all over the world and was present in New Zealand when Captain Cook arrived in 1773 with a crew eager for fresh greens. The indigenous Maori were already putting sow thistle to good use and had discovered another possibility in the milky sap that oozes from the broken stems: 
''This was left on a sunny day for a few hours, then gathered between the thumb and first finger, adding the thick creamy mass of several plants together. ..used as a sort of chewing gum called pia or ngau, which tasted very bitter at first. But after a little chewing the bitterness disappeared, and this gum was much enjoyed , especially by the women, who vied with each other in seeing who could make her pia crack the loudest'' 
So - bubblegum!


The attribution for this particular reference is to Makereti  Papakura. Who was she and why did she have such intimate knowledge of  Maori women's lives? You might have heard of her if you're a New Zealander, otherwise probably not. She was an extraordinary women, herself half Maori but with an English immigrant father. Born in 1873, she was raised by her mother's indigenous family and grew up absorbing Maori lore and language. Sent to a white school  at the age of 10 she rapidly imbibed English speech and culture. While working as a tourist guide she entertained royalty,  met and married a member of the English upper class and morphed into the lady of the manor in the tiny  Oxfordshire village of Oddington.  Makereti, now Mrs Margaret Staples-Brown, threw her house open to  NZ troops during WW1,  using Maori art and artifacts to make them feel at home.

When her marriage  failed Makareti re-invented herself as an anthropology student at Oxford University. Always identifying with her cultural roots she recreated her Maori room to encourage interest in her heritage.  She returned  to NZ  to pursue research and collect material for her thesis which was to focus on the lives of Maori women rather than men. Tragically, she died very suddenly, aged 57,  before she could submit it. It was eventually published by a colleague, TK Penniman,  as The Old-time Maori  (1938). He said of Makareti  
'The secret of her own greatness of soul lay in knowing who she was'.


There is a short biography and a photograph  of Makareti here with a link to a longer article at the end. Oddly perhaps, she instructed that she be buried in Oxfordshire.

My sow thistle proved more fruitful than expected in leading me to the story of this wonderful individual, although, like the plant, it is a little bitter too.