Me He Manu Rere lyrics, meaning and actions

The Me He Manu Rere lyrics are a love song in te reo Māori that opens with a wish: me he manu rere ‘if I were a flying bird’, the singer would fly to the bed of the one he loves and hold her, and then he asks her, e te tau ‘my darling’, to tahuri mai ‘turn to me’. NZ Folk Song calls it “this passionate dream-song of one man’s unrequited love”, sung for tourists at Whakarewarewa in Rotorua in the 1920s and still very popular. This guide explains every word from Te Aka Māori Dictionary, says what each verse means, who wrote it (two sources name two different people), who made it famous, what is known about the actions, and how to say it. It does not print the full words, for a copyright reason explained below; NZ Folk Song and Aotearoa Songbook both have them.

Updated 23 October 2026 · 8 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

What Me He Manu Rere means

The title is four words. manu is a bird, and Te Aka adds “any winged creature including bats, cicadas, butterflies”; rere is to fly, flow or rush, and follows the noun as a description, so manu rere ‘a flying bird’. he is a, and me here is not and or must but if. Te Aka’s note on it is the key to the whole song: this me “often implies the reverse of what is stated”. Saying if I were a bird means I am not one, so the flight never happens. Te Aka’s own example sentence uses the same pattern:

Me he manu ahau, kua rere atu ki Rarotonga. ‘If I was a bird I would have flown to Rarotonga.’

In the song, as in the example, the second half begins with kua, the particle Te Aka describes as marking an action completed or “a state established”; Te Aka’s translation renders it would have flown. Te Aka also notes that he is not used after a preposition except me in the sense if or like, which is why the two words sit side by side. They are two words: NZ Folk Song points out that a 1975 songbook printed the title as Mehe Manu Rere, a misprint others have copied, and “Mehe is not a Maori word”.

The birds themselves have their own guide: Māori names for native birds and animals. The song names no particular bird.

Me He Manu Rere translation, word by word

These are the words of the two verses most people sing, in the order they come, each with Te Aka Māori Dictionary’s meaning. Read with the lyric open beside it on NZ Folk Song or Aotearoa Songbook, they let you work out every line for yourself.

Māori	Te Aka’s meaning	In the song
me he	if, if only; often implies the reverse of what is stated	opens the wish: if I were
manu, rere	bird; to fly, flow, flee	a bird in flight
ahau	I, me	the singer
kua	a particle marking an action completed or a state established	I would have
ki	to, towards	flying to
tō	your (one thing)	your bed, your body
moenga	bed, sleeping place; also marriage	where he would fly
ki te	to, before a verb: marks a purpose	in order to
awhi	to embrace, hug, cuddle, cherish	hold you
tinana	body	your body; in verse two, the singer’s own
auē	an exclamation of astonishment or distress; as a verb, to cry, wail	a cry between the lines
e	the particle used when calling someone	O …
tau	husband, partner, lover, darling, sweetheart	my darling
tahuri	to turn	turn
mai	this way, towards the speaker	towards me
kei te	before a verb: an action going on now	is sleeping, is waking
moe	to sleep, close the eyes, dream	the body sleeps
oho	to wake up, start; to be roused, including of feelings	the spirit is awake
wairua	spirit, soul, distinct from the body	the spirit
hotu	to sob, pant, sigh, usually with the heart; to long, yearn	the heart sobs
manawa	heart (of a person)	the heart

Two words are worth a second look. Te Aka spells the cry two ways: aue, an exclamation of surprise, and auē, of astonishment or distress. NZ Folk Song prints aue without the macron; Aotearoa Songbook prints auē, the cry of distress. And hotu is almost a fixed pair with manawa ‘heart’: Te Aka’s own example is “ka hotu te manawa”, from a 1918 newspaper, translated “my heart sobs”.

What the song says, verse by verse

The first verse: the wish

The singer imagines being a bird so that he could fly to the bed of the one he loves and take her in his arms. Because of me he, the listener knows from the first word that it is only a wish. The verse ends with a cry, auē ‘oh!’ twice, and the line that ends both verses, an appeal to e te tau ‘my darling’ to tahuri mai ‘turn to me’.

The second verse: body and spirit

Three lines built the same way, each kei te plus a verb plus a noun: the body is asleep, the spirit is awake, the heart is sobbing. Te Aka defines wairua as the spirit “distinct from the body”, which is the point of the verse: he lies asleep, but some part of him is wide awake and longing, as if it could make the journey the first verse wished for. NZ Folk Song’s translation renders the heart as throbbing with desire; Te Aka gives both sob and long, yearn for hotu, so the line carries both. Then the cry and the appeal again.

A third, farewell verse

The version Ernest McKinlay collected at Whakarewarewa and published in 1936, which NZ Folk Song prints, has a third verse that is rarely sung now: a farewell to a girl, haere rā ‘goodbye’, who goes out of sight and leaves the singer behind, weeping and sobbing (tangi ‘to cry’, hotuhotu ‘to sob’).

The women’s wording

The song is about a man dreaming. NZ Folk Song reports that when women sang it as an action song, the second verse’s te ‘the’ became tō ‘your’, so the sleeping body is no longer the singer’s own: “moe tō tinana”, your body sleeps. That is the wording Alan Anderson and Reupena Ngata printed in Maori Action Songs (1960), and Inia Te Wiata’s 1975 songbook kept it.

Who wrote Me He Manu Rere?

The sources name two different people and neither explains the other. NZ Folk Song heads its page “Arnold Reedy ? c. 1925”, with its own question mark. Hānara (Arnold) Reedy, born in 1903, was a Ngāti Porou leader, orator and Māori Battalion captain, and died in 1971, according to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Aotearoa Songbook credits instead Wī Te Tau Huata of Ngāti Kahungunu, the Anglican priest and Māori Battalion chaplain, born in 1917 and died in 1991. Neither man’s biography in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography mentions the song.

What is on record is where it was first heard. NZ Folk Song says it was performed for tourists at Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, in the 1920s, and that Ernest McKinlay collected and recorded it there in the early 1930s, with help on the English from the guide Maggie Papakura, Sir Peter Buck and Wiremu Rangi, publishing it in Maori Songs (Sydney, 1936). Te Ara says it was first recorded at Whakarewarewa in 1936.

Where the accounts differ

Question	One account	Another account
Who wrote it	Arnold Reedy, about 1925, marked with a question mark (NZ Folk Song; Wikisource follows it)	Wī Te Tau Huata (Aotearoa Songbook)
When it was first recorded	at Whakarewarewa in the early 1930s, published 1936 (NZ Folk Song)	at Whakarewarewa in 1936 (Te Ara)
Verse one, third line	ki te awhi tō tinana (NZ Folk Song)	ki te awhi i tō tinana, with the object marker i (Aotearoa Songbook)
The spirit in verse two	wāke, a loan from English walk, in McKinlay’s 1936 text (as NZ Folk Song reads it)	oho ‘wake, be roused’ in the 1960 book and in the words sung today (NZ Folk Song)

Who sings Me He Manu Rere

1920s and 1930s. Performers at Whakarewarewa, for visitors to Rotorua, as an action song (NZ Folk Song).
1950s. Te Ara says Johnny Cooper, “the Māori cowboy”, made it popular; NZ Folk Song adds the Hawaiian-style musician Bill Sevesi and his Island Rhythm.
1982. It is one of the five classics in “Maoris on 45”, the medley by The Consorts that reached No. 4, AudioCulture says. NZ On Screen says the record and its video, made by Dalvanius Prime, pay tribute to the party singalongs of his childhood.
1986. A recording by the St Joseph’s Māori Girls’ Choir closes the film My Letter to George (NZ Folk Song).

NZ Folk Song lists it among its Māori songs as a waiata a ringa, an action song, and notes that the second verse is sung with harmonies. More of the songs New Zealanders know by heart are in Māori songs everyone knows, and another much-loved love song, from 1982, is E Ipo.

Me He Manu Rere actions

It is a waiata ā-ringa ‘action song’, which Te Aka defines as “a popular modern song type with set actions and European-type tunes”. But we could not find a school, university or published teaching resource that describes its actions, so this page does not describe any: an invented set would be worse than none. What is on record is that Alan Anderson and Reupena Ngata printed the words “plus actions” in Maori Action Songs (A. H. Reed, 1960), NZ Folk Song says. That book, or a kapa haka tutor, is the place to learn them.

How action songs work in general, from the trembling hands to the words a tutor uses, is explained in Kapa haka explained.

How to pronounce Me He Manu Rere

Every syllable ends in a vowel, and there is no long vowel in the title, so it breaks into six short, even syllables: Me-he Ma-nu Re-re. Each e is the e of English bed, never he as in English; each r is one quick tap of the tongue.

Keep manu short. With a long first vowel, mānu is a different word in Te Aka: to float.
Long vowels elsewhere. Hold the marked vowel a little longer in tō ‘your’ and auē ‘oh!’.
Vowel pairs. wairua ‘spirit’ is wai-ru-a, and ahau ‘I’ is a-hau.
Even stress. tahuri ‘turn’, tinana ‘body’ and manawa ‘heart’ have no heavy English-style stress.

The rest of the rules are in the Māori pronunciation guide.

Why the full words are not printed here

New Zealand’s Copyright Act 1994 protects a song’s words for 50 years from the end of the year its writer dies. If Arnold Reedy wrote Me He Manu Rere, that ran out at the end of 2021; if Wī Te Tau Huata did, it runs until the end of 2041. Since a published songbook credits Huata, this page treats the words as protected: it explains them, quotes no more than three words at a time, and leaves the full text to NZ Folk Song and Aotearoa Songbook, which offers the lyrics, sheet music and a recording.

Going further

Almost every word of the song is everyday vocabulary: manu ‘bird’, moe ‘sleep’, tinana ‘body’ and wairua ‘spirit’, and the grammar of kua and kei te that holds the lines together, are all in Verbavia’s free te reo Māori course. To say the song’s feeling in plain words, see I love you in Māori, where e te tau turns up again.