Stories of Ourselves: "The People Before" by Maurice Shadbolt

Having grown up on a New Zealand farm, the narrator of this story recalls the day when a group of native Maori came to visit the land that once belonged to them.

Here are links to our lists for the short stories in Stories of Ourselves:
The Hollow of the Three Hills, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Signalman, The Happy Prince, The Yellow Wall Paper, The Son’s Veto, The Open Boat, The Moving Finger, The Door in the Wall, Sredni Vashtar, How It Happened, Her First Ball, The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection, The Fly in the Ointment, The Custody of the Pumpkin, An Englishman’s Home, The Phoenix, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Prison, The Destructors, Meteor, Billenium, The Lemon Orchard, The People Before, The Enemy, Five-Twenty, A Horse and Two Goats, Report on the Threatened City, The Rain Horse, Ming’s Biggest Prey, The Village Saint, Secrets, The Stoat, Games at Twilight, The Taste of Watermelon, Journey (Patricia Grace), The Bath, My Greatest Ambition, To Da-duh, in Memoriam, Of White Hairs and Cricket, Elephant, Sandpiper, Journey (Shirley Geok-Lin Um), The Third and Final Continent, Tyres, At Hiruharama, Real Time, On Her Knees, The Contest
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. scrub
    dense vegetation consisting of stunted trees or bushes
    Behind our farm, and up the river, there was all kind of wild country. Scrub and jagged black humps on the hills, bush in gullies where fire hadn’t reached; hills and more hills, deep valleys with caves and twisting rivers, and mountains white with winter in the distance.
  2. gully
    a deep ditch cut by running water
    Behind our farm, and up the river, there was all kind of wild country. Scrub and jagged black humps on the hills, bush in gullies where fire hadn’t reached; hills and more hills, deep valleys with caves and twisting rivers, and mountains white with winter in the distance.
  3. plod
    walk heavily and firmly, as when weary, or through mud
    There was room for plodding his paddocks in all weathers, milking cows and sending cream down river to the dairy factory, and cursing the bloody Government; there was room in his life for all these things and more, but not for singing.
  4. coherent
    marked by an orderly and consistent relation of parts
    I couldn’t, even then, quite make the connexion. It remained for a long while one of those adult mysteries. And it was no use puzzling over it, no use asking my father for a more coherent explanation.
  5. incipient
    only partly in existence; imperfectly formed
    And in the same way as he checked incipient anarchy on his land he hoped, perhaps, to check it in his son.
  6. anarchy
    a state of lawlessness and disorder
    And in the same way as he checked incipient anarchy on his land he hoped, perhaps, to check it in his son.
  7. derelict
    forsaken by owner or inhabitants
    The farmhouse stood derelict among the returning wilderness.
  8. launch
    a motorboat with an open deck or a half deck
    There was a new launch service down to the nearest dairy factory, in the township ten miles away; only in the event of flood, or a launch breakdown, would he have to dispose of his cream by carrying it on a sledge across country, three miles, to the nearest road.
  9. wrangle
    quarrel noisily, angrily, or disruptively
    He was wrangling at the time with my mother, who held opinions on a dwindling number of subjects.
  10. lapse
    pass into a specified state or condition
    She never surrendered any of these opinions, exactly; she just kept them more and more to herself until, presumably, they lapsed quietly and died. As she herself, much later, was to lapse quietly from life, without much complaint.
  11. ragged
    worn out from stress or strain
    Others started getting pretty ragged in the afternoons too. A lot of us had been up helping our fathers since early in the morning.
  12. accomplice
    a person who joins with another in carrying out some plan
    He detested softies, even the accomplices of softies. My mother, in a way, was such an accomplice. She’d never been keen about first me, then Jim, helping with work on the farm.
  13. tether
    tie with a rope
    We tethered our horses near the football field and went off to join the crowd.
  14. barrack
    laugh at with contempt and derision
    At the football he barracked with the best of them in the thick of the crowd. Sometimes he called out when the rest of the crowd was silent and tense; he could be very sarcastic about poor players, softies who were afraid to tackle properly.
  15. canter
    ride at a smooth three-beat gait
    When he finished we rode home together for a late milking. He would grow talkative, as we cantered towards dark, and even give me the impression he was glad of my company.
  16. fringe
    the outside boundary or surface of something
    We’d canter along a straight stretch, coast up a rise, rein in the horses, and there it was – his green kingdom, his tight tamed acres beneath the hills and beside the river, a thick spread of fenced grass from the dark fringe of hillscrub down to the ragged willows above the water.
  17. conscience
    conformity to one's own sense of right conduct
    It would also be the time when he remembered all the jobs he’d neglected, all the work he should have done instead of going to the football. His conscience would keep him busy all day Sunday.
  18. extravagance
    the quality of exceeding appropriate limits
    He’d hardly have said he loved the land: love, in any case, would have been an extravagance.
  19. bluff
    a high steep bank
    In summer we swam down under the river-willows; we also had a canoe tied there and sometimes we paddled up-river, under great limestone bluffs shaggy with toi toi, into country which grew wilder and wilder.
  20. encroach
    impinge or infringe upon
    He had failed, perhaps much as the land’s former owners had failed; why? He might have answered the question for himself satisfactorily, while he grubbed away at the scrub encroaching on our pasture; but I doubt it.
  21. bleak
    unpleasantly cold and damp
    It was worst of all in winter, when the land looked bleak, the hills were grey with low cloud, and the rain swirled out of the sky.
  22. bog
    get stuck while doing something
    All life vanished from his face and I knew he detested everything: the land which had promised him independence was now only a muddy snare; he was bogged here, between hills and river, and couldn’t escape.
  23. loiter
    linger, remain, or wait around for no apparent reason
    That sunny Saturday morning I loitered about the house with Jim, waiting for the people to arrive.
  24. traipse
    walk or tramp about
    ‘What do they want to come traipsing round my property for? They’ve got a bloody cheek.’
  25. falter
    walk unsteadily
    My father’s step faltered; I blundered up alongside him.
  26. litter
    conveyance consisting of a chair or bed carried by bearers
    And last of all there was something the young men carried. As we drew nearer we saw it was an old man in a rough litter. The whole party of them fussed over making the old man comfortable.
  27. solemn
    dignified and somber in manner or character
    His round face, which I could imagine looking jolly, was very solemn just then.
  28. aloof
    distant, cold, or detached in manner
    He just stood his ground, aloof and faintly hostile.
  29. affable
    diffusing warmth and friendliness
    He appeared quite affable now.
  30. jest
    a humorous anecdote or remark intended to provoke laughter
    ‘We’ll make ourselves a bit of a camp up there tonight,’ Tom said, pointing to Craggy Hill. ‘We ought to be comfortable up there. Like home, eh?’ The jest fell mildly from his lips.
  31. foliage
    the collective amount of leaves of one or more plants
    The old women now, I noticed, carried green foliage.
  32. scour
    examine minutely
    They scoured the hills, and most of the caves they could find.
  33. remnant
    a small part remaining after the main part no longer exists
    They traced the remnants of the tribe, living up the coast, and found that indeed an old man of the tribe was missing.
  34. yarn
    tell or spin a tale
    One evening after milking, when we stood smoking and yarning in the cool, I remembered something and decided I might put a question to Jim.
  35. mantelpiece
    a shelf that projects from a wall above a fireplace
    And where I found those greenstones. I’ve still got it at home, you know, up on the mantelpiece.
Created on Thu Mar 08 10:05:16 EST 2018 (updated Tue Mar 27 14:11:21 EDT 2018)

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