"Father Ildefonse Alazard (1908, p. 8), in an introduction to Roussel's vocabulary of Rapanui language, publishes a brief sample of the peculiar text chanted for Jaussen on Tahiti. This text, supposedly representing the first line of a 42 cm. long tablet [Aruku Kurega (?)], is rendered here in English translation as it seems clearly to illustrate Metoro's reported method of personally filling in the words at random to tie together signs he believed he could identify morphologically on the tablet. The result is a chant that has every aspect of being created on the spur of the moment like a school-boy's composition around an obligatory series of given words chosen at random:

'May it rain from the sky on the two earths of Hotu Matua! May he sit high in the sky and on the earth! [Possibly an old version of the year: 'earth' = from spring to autumn equinox, 'sky' = from autumn to spring equinox.]

The oldest son is on the earth, on his own earth: his canoe has sailed towards his younger brother, right up to the child. For him, whether he be in the sky or on the earth, may he come to the earth, he who enjoyed himself in the sky! [The first - 'oldest' - half-year then being 'earth'. The 'younger brother' is the half-year = 'sky'. He is a 'child' in the same way as a new year is a 'child'.]

He keeps the earth in his hand. Man go away. I will remain on my earth.

Father, you who sit on your throne, go to your child. He enjoyed himself in the sky.

The bird has flown from the earth, coming to the man who eats on earth. [Here the first 'earth' must be the sky, otherwise this sentence is nonsense.]

The man feeds the hen, he has put the hen under water, he has taken its feathers.

Hen, take care of the spear, go to the good place, go right up to the king, to his house, fly: it is flown to the good place, far from the spear: flying, towards the children of the earth it is flown into safety.'

Alazard (Ibid.) adds: 'In spite of the deficiency of this chant, Monseigneur Jaussen would gladly have published the interlinear translations of all his tablets, if the costs had not been so considerable. He had to renounce it, and he satisfied himself with the editing of a brief notice with a list of approximately 500 hieroglyphic signs, which appeared a year after his death, ín Bulletin Géograhique in 1893."

(Heyerdahl 4)