Examples of death wails have been found in numerous societies, including among the Celts of Europe; and various indigenous peoples of Asia, the Americas, Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
Here the men came to a full stop, whilst several of the women singled out from the rest, and marched into the space between the two parties, having their heads coated over with lime, and raising a loud and melancholy wail, until they came to a spot about equidistant from both, when they threw down their cloaks with violence, and the bags which they carried on their backs, and which contained all their worldly effects.
The bags were then opened, and pieces of glass and shells taken out, with which they lacerated their thighs, backs, and breasts, in a most frightful manner, whilst the blood kept pouring out of the wounds in streams; and in this plight, continuing their wild and piercing lamentations, they moved up towards the Moorunde tribe, who sat silently and immovably in the place at first occupied.
One of the women then went up to a strange native, who was on a visit to the Moorunde tribe and who stood neutral in the affair of the meeting, and by violent language and frantic gesticulations endeavoured to incite him to revenge the death of some relation or friend.
This is the generally understood order of revenge; for the persons who were to receive the wounds, as soon as they saw the weapons of their assailants poised, at once put out the left foot, to steady themselves, and presented the left shoulder for the blow, frequently uttering the word "'Leipa" (spear), as the others appeared to hesitate.Whilst this was going on, the influential men of each tribe were violently talking to each other, and apparently accusing one another of being accessory to the death of some of their people.
The manes of the dead having been appeased, the honour of each party was left unsullied, and the Nar-wij-jerooks retired about a hundred yards, and sat down, ready to enter upon the ceremonies of the day, which will be described in another place.Ernest Giles, who traversed Australia in the 1870s and 1880s, left an account of a skirmish that took place between his survey party and members of a local tribe in the Everard Ranges of mountains in 1882.
From their camp up in the rocks, the chanters descended to the lower ground, and seemed to be performing a funereal march all round the central mass, as the last tones we heard were from behind the hills, where it first arose."
A more modern account of the death wail has been given by Roy Barker, a descendant of the Murawari tribe, some fifty miles north of the present town of Brewarrina.
Albert Galvany argues they were in fact "subject to a strict and complex process of codification that determines, right down to the finest details, the place, the timing and the ways in which such expressions of pain should be proffered".
[3] The Liji ("Book of Rites") proclaimed that the mourner's type of relationship with the deceased dictated where the death wails should take place: for your brother it should take place in the ancestral temple; for your father's friend, opposite the great door of the ancestral temple; for your friend, opposite the main door of their private lodging; for an acquaintance, out in the countryside.
The mourners as they gather on the marae at the wailing-place liken the dead chief to a lofty forest-tree overthrown—kua hinga te totara—to a carved war-canoe shattered by the waves.
An orator or singer is likened to a tui or a bellbird—“my sweetest singing bird is hushed, that waked with melody the morn.” At these funeral gatherings the leading men of the assembled tribes will pace to and fro, fine flax or feather mats thrown across their shoulders, over their European clothes, and greenstone, whalebone or wooden weapons, cherished family heirlooms, in their hands, and thus address the dead: “Go, O Sir!
“Pass thou along the far sands of Haumu, following the great path trodden bare by the feet of the innumerable dead, ever going the one way, and none returning.”In a 2023 interview, educator Dr. Hiria Hape explained that the apakura was: "(...) the deepest pain and mamae (ache, hurt) that a kuia (elder woman) could express at the marae (meeting place) (...) it's the deepest mamae that you feel in your puku (belly).