Uetonga was at work tattooing the face of a chief. This chief was lying on the ground with his hands clenched and his toes twitching while the father of Niwareka worked at his face with a bone of many sharpened points, and Mataora was greatly surprised to see that blood was flowing from the cheeks of that chief. Mataora had his own moko, it was done here in the world above, but it was painted on with ochre and blue clay. Mataora had not seen such moko as Uetonga was making, and he said to him, 'You are doing that in the wrong way, O old one. We do not do it thus.'

'Quite so,' replied Uetonga, 'you do not do it thus. But yours is the way that is wrong. What you do above there is tuhi, it is only fit for wood. You see,' he said, putting forth his hand to Mataora's cheek, 'it will rub off.' And Uetonga smeared Mataora's make-up with his fingers and spoiled its appearance. And all the people sitting round them laughed, and Uetonga with them ..." (Antony Alpers, Legends of the South Seas.)

The myth about Mataora searching for his wife Niwareka in the Underworld connects tattooing with the world below, and the Maori word moko also means tattoo, which is explained at the end of the story:

"... The designs that were made on Mataora's face by the chisel of Uetonga were the tiwhana, these lines that sweep over the eyebrows to the temples; the rerepehi, those lines which sweep from the nose around the mouth to the chin; and also the two spirals on the side of the nose of a man, they are called ngu and pongiangia. We call this work moko because of the lizard whose twitching tail is seen in all its curving lines."

Mataora means the living (ora) 'eye' (mata), i.e. 'the Living Face'. Like when Sun goes down and it becomes black, so the face of the visitor to the Underworld has to get his face blackened.

We should remember the Hawaiian son Mokuola, 'the Living Island', who grew up healthily because the head of his dead father Ulu was buried properly. There could be a wordplay between moko and moku. First comes 'the plantation' (te tanuga o te tau moko) and later the new baby is cut off (motu) from his mother to grow into a healthy separate individual ('not divided' person).

Uetonga is Ue-tonga, where tonga presumably refers to 'the bottom of the sea' (winter solstice). At that time motion (life) is ceasing:

Uéué, to move about, to flutter; he-uéué te kahu i te tokerau, the clothes flutter in the wind; poki oho ta'e uéué, obedient child. Vanaga.

1. Alas. Mq.: ue, to groan. 2. To beg (ui). Ueue: 1. To shake (eueue); kirikiri ueue, stone for sling. PS Pau.: ueue, to shake the head. Mq.: kaueue, to shake. Ta.: ue, id. Sa.: lue, to shake, To.: ue'í, to shake, to move; luelue, to move, to roll as a vessel in a calm. Niuē: luelue, to quake, to shake. Uvea: uei, to shake; ueue, to move. Viti: ue, to move in a confused or tumultous manner. 2. To lace. Churchill.

Uéué is to move about and probably the opposite of ue in Uetonga.

... When the new moon appeared women assembled and bewailed those who had died since the last one, uttering the following lament: 'Alas! O moon! Thou has returned to life, but our departed beloved ones have not. Thou has bathed in the waiora a Tane, and had thy life renewed, but there is no fount to restore life to our departed ones. Alas ...

Aue

Ah, alas. Aueue, oh. P Pau., Ta.: aue, alas. Mgv.: aue, auhe, alas. Mq.: aue, oh, alas; auhe, a sigh. Exclamation in general representing the most primordial type of speech, it seems that this may be reduced to recognizable elements. The e is throughout these languages a vocative or hailing sign, commonly postpositive in relation to the person hailed. In the examination of au we have shown that the primal first person singular designation is u. With the comparatively scanty material afforded by this vocabulary we may not attempt ot define the use of a but we have no hesitation in noting that proof based on wider studies will show it to have, inter alia, a characteristic function as a word-maker. In a very high degree, then, a-u-e is represented by a common English interjection 'oh my!' in which oh = a, my = u, and e = !. Churchill.

What is this cry which our primitive islanders share with the animals? Look at its elements, all full-throated. First we have a, the sound of mouth open, fauces open, lungs full of air. As air expires the sound recedes in the mouth towards the palate and we find the u. Last comes the conscious finish of the utterance, the muscles begin to retract, the sound-making point is forced forward and the sound is e. If the man had but a few more cubic centimeters of lung capacity he could attain cow volumne for his cry, or interjection, since it amounts to the same thing. Churchill 2.