A well-known tattooing chant deals with the subject entirely from the artist's standpoint, and emphasises the business principles upon which he went to work.

It was this song that Alfred Domett (Robert Browning's Waring) must have had in his mind when, in his New Zealand poem, he thus described the Moko on the face of the chief Tangi-Moana:-- "And finer, closer spirals of dark blue Were never seen than in his cheek's tattoo; Fine as if engine turned those cheeks declared No cost to fee the artist had been spared; That many a basket of good maize had made That craftsman careful how he tapped his blade, And many a greenstone trinket had been given To get his chisel-flint so deftly driven." When, however, the slow and costly agony was over, the owner of an unusually well-executed face became a superior person.

He united in himself the virtues and vices of a chieftain of high degree (shown by the elaborateness of his face pattern), of a tribal dandy, of a brave man able to endure pain, of the owner of a unique picture, and of an acknowledged art critic.

In the rigid-looking mask, moreover, which had now taken the place of his natural face were certain lines by which any one of his fellow-tribesmen could identify him living or dead.

In this way the heads of Maori chiefs have been recognised even in the glass cases of museums.