So much of the PUHOI story is of
hardship and hunger that you could easily be conviction that life was a unrelieved
struggle in gloom and despondency.
This was not so.
People who work hard usually play
hard. When the BOHEMIAN people took time off to enjoy time out, they threw themselves into
it with an energy and enthusiasm of which present-day folk would not be capable.
After the first few years when they
had bedded themselves in adequately to be, not the BOHEMIAN immigrants, but the PUHOI
community, their love for music and dancing was their fundamental respite from their hard
labour.
Their recreation in its self was not
hard work! It was always easier to start a dance than to stop one. After walking long
distances and perhaps wading through the river to get to it, the people were in no hurry
to terminate the fun and it was common for the dance to carry on till the wee small hours.
The YESENSKY family were the
fiddlers at the dances held in the community and, they have left their mark on the
settlement in the name of Fiddlers Hill.
The dudelsack, a bagpipes with every
possible addition and modification, was the speciality of the PAUL family. Other families
played the accordion and the Jews harp.
The musicians, particularly
YESENSKY, the fiddler, had stamina to equal that of the dancers and, while there was a
dancer left able to keep his feet moving the music went on.
The national dances of BOHEMIA - the
Unmadum, the D'bairsch Durl, the Hauawickla and the Dora Hat Gsagt were all of an
energetic toe-tapping variety.
The picture of a one room shanty lit
by touches of burning kauri gum or the home-made candles burning brightly and perhaps
later a lamplight room at the hotel overflowing with a community deprived of almost ever
pleasure and determine to enjoy this dance to the saturation point, whisking themselves
from a state of congenial amusement into hectic merriment and finally into cheery
weariness, is perhaps the truest indication of what the BOHEMIAN people were like and
wherein lay their energy and strength. So while they were producing their national
music to make the hills and gully's ring with, they were calling on reserves of energy
from their strong, peasant background.
Their pleasure in dancing was the
brightness essential to make a bearable whole to their lives, and if it took on a hectic,
wild quality, it was because their everyday living was so very sombre indeed. There was no
half tones in the lives of the PUHOI settlers. Physical vigour and perseverance has kept
them alive and formed their lives in NEW ZEALAND. It just naturally took control of their
social life.
