I thought of this work on Tikopia songs many years ago, as a study of poetry, that is, as an examination of the modes of arrangement of words in the Tikopia language in conventional verse form, leaving aside reference to music and to bodily movement such as dance, except as general descriptive background. This is still the main tenor of the work, which in some ways is an extension of the semantic aspect of my Tikopia-English Dictionary (Auckland University Press, 1985). But as research into Tikopia and other Polynesian cultures has developed, it has seemed to me that some rather more systematic contextualization of the songs is now feasible. My own textual record of poetic composition is fairly ample, being based upon collection of examples from Tikopia people at five periods over fifty years. I have also had much discussion of the meaning of many poems with many Tikopia, and have taken part in many events in which such poems were being sung. So a reasonably detailed account of the form and nature of these songs, their imagery and the social setting which helped to inspire and shape them can now be given.

The musical record is not as ample. In 19281 had no recording apparatus with which to capture Tikopia speech and singing. But thanks to the enterprise of my colleague James Spillius in 1952 and 1953, supplemented by my own recordings in 1966 and 1973, by very helpful contribution from Ishmael Tuki in Auckland in 1978, and by a few other sources, a small but fairly representative set of Tikopia musical examples, mainly of secular songs, has now been secured on tape.