Patupaiarehe - Fairy Folk!

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Patupaiarehe

In Mâori tradition patupaiarehe, also known as tûrehu and pakepakehâ, were fairy-like creatures of the forests and mountain tops. Although they had some human attributes, patupaiarehe were regarded not as people but as supernatural beings (he iwi atua).

They were seldom seen, and an air of mystery and secrecy still surrounds them. In most traditions, those who encountered patupaiarehe were able to understand their language. But in one account they were unintelligible.

Physical features
Patupaiarehe had light skin, and red or fair hair. Historian James Cowan was told that ‘they were a lighter complexion than Maori; their hair was of a dull golden or reddish hue, urukehu, such as is sometimes seen in Maori of today.’ 1

Unlike Mâori, they were never tattooed. Mohi Tûrei of Ngâti Porou described their skin as white, albino or the colour of red ochre. Their eye colour varied from light blue to black.

There is still debate about their height. The Tûhoe tribe records that they were small, but others say they were similar in size to humans. Whanganui stories claim them to be giants, more than 2 metres tall.

Where did they live?
Patupaiarehe were generally found deep in the forests, or on mist-covered hilltops. In these isolated places they settled and built their homes, sometimes described as forts. In some stories their houses and pâ were built from swirling mist. In others, they were made from kareao (supplejack vine).

In the North Island they were said to live mainly in the Waikato–Waipâ basin, the Cape Colville–Te Aroha range, the hills about Rotorua, the Urewera ranges and Wairoa districts, and the Waitâkere ranges in the Auckland region.

South Island traditions had them living mainly in the hills around Lyttelton Harbour, Akaroa and the Tâkitimu range, and in the hills between the Arahura River and Lake Brunner.

What kind of people were they?
Patupaiarehe society was kinship-based, similar to Mâori society. In 1894 Hoani Nahe, an elder of the Ngâti Maru people, recalled three sub-tribes of patupaiarehe: Ngâti Kura, Ngâti Korakorako, and Ngâti Tûrehu. Tahurangi, Whanawhana, and Nukupori were important chiefs. They were generally a closed group who shunned intruders, and were unfriendly to those who ventured into their midst.

Patupaiarehe were hunters and gatherers, surviving on raw forest foods and sometimes fishing from the shores of the sea or a lake. Their canoes were made of kôrari (flax stalks). Cooked food was offensive or foul to them. In different traditions, albino birds and eels, red flax and red eels were considered their property, and trouble befell Mâori who took any of these.

Fearing the light, they were active mainly in the twilight hours and at night, or when the mist was heavy enough to shield them. They wore flax garments (pâkçrangi), dyed red, but also rough mats (pora or pûreke). They were also known for playing kôauau and pûtôrino (flutes).

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Abductions
Patupaiarehe were known to lure people, especially attractive women, to their midst. A patupaiarehe would use hypnotic magical sounds from his flute to lure a young woman to his side, and then take her back to his camp. There he would make love to her before taking her home. The spell he had cast on her meant that he could call her at any time and she would be compelled to return to him.

The urukehu (red-heads) and albinos among Mâori were said to be the descendants of such unions of patupaiarehe and mortal women. Men who were captured were either mistreated and then released, or killed.

Warding them off
There were different methods of avoiding the sometimes evil intentions of the patupaiarehe. Homes would be smeared with kôkôwai (iron oxide mixed with shark oil) when patupaiarehe were known to be close. Also the cooking ovens were put into operation. The smell coming from both the kôkôwai and cooked food was repugnant to patupaiarehe, and kept them at bay.

Patupaiarehe were also afraid of the light of open fires, so as long as the campfire was still glowing at night, people considered themselves safe. Young children too were warned not to stray from the village ‘in case the patupaiarehe gets you’.

How Mâori came to use a net for fishing
One traditional account tells of a chief, Kahukura, who when travelling north found himself on a lonely beach just as night set in. He slept in the sand dunes, but was awoken by the sounds of voices and laughter. At the water’s edge were a group of patupaiarehe, the fairy people, catching great numbers of fish in a net of woven flax. Despite his fear Kahukura crept among them, hoping to take the net and find out how it was made. As it was dark, and he was short and fair like the patupaiarehe, they did not notice him as being different. He knew that if he could delay them until dawn they would flee to avoid the sun, leaving the net behind. He helped thread the gutted fish onto lines, but tied his knots so they would come undone again. This tactic worked, and the fairy people fled as the sun rose, leaving behind their net and the fish. From this Kahukura discovered the secret to making the net, and taught it to his people.

Miru
A patupaiarehe named Miru is credited with giving Mâori the sacred knowledge and wisdom of his mysterious world. Married to a mortal woman, Miru took his father-in-law to his world and taught him these things. In this way the rites of mâkutu (magic arts), âtahu (love charms) and other priestly skills were passed on to the Mâori world. Miru’s people also taught the visitors whai (string games) and tititorea (stick games).

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Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori
Introduction
Maori Legends of the “Patu-paiarehe.”
A New Zealand poet once lamented the dearth of fairy lore in these islands, and in his ignorance made complaint:

Why have we in these isles no fairy dell,
No haunted wood, nor wild enchanted mere?

He declared that this lack of faerie glamour must be filled by the imaginative writer—“The poet's art—as yet without avail—must weave the story.” It was unfortunate that a writer with so sympathetic a muse had never heard of the Maori's rich store of fairy legend and wonder-tale, of endless folk-talk about the supernatural, the sprites of the woods, the elusive Patu-paiarehe, the mysterious wild men of the mountains, the strange spirits that haunt great pools at river-sources, and streams and lakes. For all this in endless variety we have in New Zealand. There is not another country, not even Ireland or the page 2 fairy-ridden Isle of Man, so full of folk-memories and primitive beliefs of this kind. The only reason that the pakeha does not know of it is that very, very few have gone to the trouble to delve into this class of myth and tradition and preserve while there is yet time the curious and poetic tales which crystallize for us the old Maori belief in unseen presences and the fairy folk that haunted many a lofty mountain and many a shadowy wood.

Fairies, giants, fabulous monsters, marvel-working magicians, strange apparitions of forest and alp, have ever been found in countries of such a mountainous, broken and generously-wooded character as New Zealand, and it would be strange indeed if so imaginative a race as the Maori-Polynesian had not peopled the land with all manner of curious extra-human beings.

Poetic above all the other myths of the strange and supernatural are the many stories which tell of that mystic race the Patu-paiarehe. This name Patu-paiarehe is the term applied by the Maori to the mysterious forest-dwelling people who for want of a more exact term may be described as the fairies of New Zealand. They are page 3 spoken of as an iwi-atua, a race of supernatural beings, and they are accredited with some of the marvellous powers attributed to the world of faerie in many other parts of the globe. Some folk-tales of the Maori describe them as little people, but the native fancy does not usually picture them the tiny elves common to the old-world fairydom. Most of the legends I have gathered give them the ordinary stature of mortals, while at the same time investing them with some of the characteristics of the enchanted tribes of other lands.

The Patu-paiarehe were for the most part of much lighter complexion than the Maori; their hair was of the dull golden or reddish hue “uru-kehu,” such as is sometimes seen among the Maoris of to-day. They inhabited the remote parts of the wooded ranges, preferring the highest peaks such as Hihikiwi, on Mount Pirongia, and the summit of Te Aroha. They ventured out only by night and on days of heavy clouds and fog. They lived on forest foods, but sometimes they resorted to the shores of sea and lake for fish.

They had a great aversion to the steam rising from the Maori cooking-ovens, and page 4 to the sight and smell of kokowai, the red ochre (hæmatite earth mixed with shark oil) with which the Maori bedaubed his dwelling and himself. They were greatly skilled in all manner of enchantments and magic, and they often employed these arts of gramarie to bewilder and terrify the iwi Maori. Nevertheless we find them at times living on good terms with their Maori neighbours, and indeed (see the Story of Tarapikau in “The Wars of the Fairies”) guarding the interests of their friends of the outer world and resenting any interference by Patu-paiarehe from another district.

The Patu-paiarehe, in a number of these fairy tales, constituted themselves the guardians of sacred places and visited their displeasure on those who neglected the rites for the propitiation of the forest deities.

This class of folk-tales no doubt originated in the actual existence of numerous tribes of aborigines who dwelt for safety in the more inaccessible parts of these islands. Many of them were reddish-haired, with fairer complexions than those of the Maori; the remnants of an immeasurably ancient fair-haired people who have left a strain of uru-kehu in most Maori tribes. As in the page 5 case of the ancient Picts (whence the word “pixy”), who were driven to take refuge in the caves and mountains of Scotland and Wales and the Peak of Derbyshire, the forest-dwelling refugees of New Zealand gradually became to the more powerful race an enchanted wizardly tribe, possessed of powers of transformation and of becoming invisible at will. The Patu-paiarehe were, as a rule, shy and peace-loving. The fiercer foresters, the Maero of legend, were not unlike the Fynnoderee of Manx country tales who played malevolent tricks on the farmer folk.

The dense and thickly-matted character of the New Zealand forest, with a closely-woven roof of foliage through which the sunshine was filtered to a twilight, in the inner sanctuaries of the Wao-tapu-nui-a-Tane, made strong impression on the imaginative Maori mind, and it was natural to people the heart of the bush with unseen presences and supernatural creatures. The conjecture-provoking sounds heard in the forest in the quiet of the night, noises known to those who have bivouacked much in the high woods, heightened the popular belief in the existence of fairy folk.

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Patu-paiarehe legendry in the North Island, so far as my enquiries go, is associated chiefly with the forested peaks of the Waikato-Waipa basin, the Cape Colville-Te Aroha range, and the hills about Lake Rotorua. That beautiful mountain Kake-puku, in the Waipa Valley, was a fairy resort; there is a deep wooded valley on the western side beloved of the Patu-paiarehe from Pirongia mountain. They did not venture to other parts of the mountain because they sometimes saw the Maori fires burning on the summit and on the eastern and northern sides. Their path was in the drifting clouds and low-lying banks of fog like the Irish fairy king in William Allingham's old song:

“With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses.”

In the South Island the sterner character of the landscapes, the tremendous craggy heights that wall Lake Wakatipu about, the vast white chain of the Alps, the solitudes of the tussock prairie, the silent forests, the deep, dark blue alpine lakes, tended to provide grim legends of the Maeroero, the page 7 wild men and giants of the mountains, rather than folk-talk of the Patu-paiarehe. There was also a basis of fact in the historical tradition of the Ngati-Mamoe fugitives driven into the trackless forests of the great south-west, there to disappear, to vanish like the moa. “They still haunt the western forests,” said an old man of mingled Ngati-Mamoe and Ngai-Tahu blood, when we discussed the mystery of the vanished clan of his people. “They are an iwi-atua, gifted with supernatural powers. The reason they are not seen by pakeha explorers is that they can call down the mists and clouds of the mountains to conceal them, as they did long ago when they were pursued into the wilderness beyond Lake Te Anau. Na te kohu i whakaora—the fog is their salvation.”*

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The Menehune, or Manahune, of Polynesian legend were a forest folk whose characteristics no doubt helped to develop the belief in fairy woodsmen. In Hawaiian legendry they were a people of small stature, big-eyed, with murmurous voices; they lived in frail houses of banana leaves. Like our Patu-paiarehe, they feared the daylight, and the herculean labours, such as stone-work, which they performed by night always ceased when the dawn appeared.

Maori folk-talk abounds with such legends. On the upper part of the Waitemata, or Auckland Harbour, there is a long black reef of lava, a flow from the ancient volcano Owairaka (Mount Albert) which extends from the southern side almost halfway across the harbour, towards Kauri Point. It is called by the Maoris Toka-roa, or “Long Reef.” Legend attributes to it a fairy origin. It was built by the Patu-paiarehe in a single night in an endeavour to make a bridge across the page 9 Waitemata. They were less fortunate, however, than the fairies of Irish legend who built a road across the bog of Lamrach for Mider their king. Daylight interrupted the labours of the Patu-paiarehe, and so the wonderful bridge was not finished. Here, as in many of our Maori stories, the coming of the dawn was fatal to faerie doings. The furtive folk could not endure the bright eye of Tama-nui-te-Ra.

There are many points of likeness between the Maori traditional accounts of the Patu-paiarehe and kindred beings and the fairies of Irish folk-talk. Lady Gregory, in her “Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland” (1920), describes the popular belief in the existence of the Sidhe, a fairy people fond of old forts. A fairy's voice is sometimes heard keening, a portent. There are fairy pipers among the Sidhe, making music, “the grandest I ever heard,” as one of the old people said. The Maori fairies, similarly, were much given to playing on the flute, the koauau and putorino, “the sweetest music ever heard,” says the Maori.

“There are two classes of fairies, the Dundonians, that are like ourselves, and page 10 another race, more wicked and more spiteful.” So says the west Irish peasant. The Maori has their counterparts, the fairy woodsman and the fierce malevolent Maero.

The Irish fairies cannot bear fire. The Maori Patu-paiarehe and Maero had a similar dislike to fire and also to steam from cooking-ovens.

The rumbling death-coach of Ireland has its parallel in the waka wairua, the ghost-canoe whose appearance was a portent of death.

The Mara-wara, a mermaid of the Galway coast, is like the Maraki-hau of Maori legend, the half-human half-fishlike being whose effigy is seen on the carved fronts of many houses in the Bay of Plenty and Urewera districts.

There are many such parallels in the folkbeliefs of these far-sundered poetic peoples. But the faerie lore of the New Zealand forests, hills and streams has a character all its own, developed by centuries of close contact with Nature in a very beautiful and wonderful environment.

* There are analogies in old Scotland. Ruberslaw mountain, above Teviotdale, “was a favourite lurking place for the persecuted Covenanters, and near its top is a craggy chasm, from which it is said Woodrow's ‘savory Mr. Peden’ used to preach to his scattered congregation. It was on this hill that the pursuing dragoons all but caught the preacher and his flock one day; they were caught indeed like rats in a trap, had it not been for Ruberslaw's well known character for breeding bad weather. The soldiers were advancing in full view of the conventicle. Way of escape there was none, nor time to disperse; mounted men from every quarter were scrambling up the steep face of the hill, and in that clear light what chance was left now to hide among the rocks and boulders? ‘O Lord,’ prayed Peden with extreme fervour, ‘lap the skirts of thy cloak over puir auld Sandy!’ And as if in answer to his petition there came over the entire hill a thick ‘Liddesdale drow,’ so dense that a man might not see two feet around him. When the mist cleared again there was no one left for the dragoons to take.” (Highways and Byways on the Border, by Andrew and John Lang, p. 184.)

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Chapter I
Told in the Wharepuni
A Maori Night's Entertainment
The greybeard Wairehu carried a big iron drum which once held sheep-dip into the carved wharepuni; it was filled with glowing charcoal embers to give us warmth through the night. There was a wintry bite in the air here in high-set Otukou; the breath of ice came on the wings of the keen south wind. The lonely little settlement of the Maori sheep-farming hapu was more than two thousand feet above the sea, squatting on the tussocky banks of a cold clear stream that came flashing down from the gullies of Mount Tongariro. The summit of the snow-tipped volcanic range was within three miles of us; and over its shoulder, as we rode into Otukou that day, we saw mighty Ruapehu, its icy peaks involved in the splendid gloom-clouds of a thunderstorm. In this communal hall and sleeping-house of the village we had plenty of company; the people of the hapu gathered page 12 for talk and song, preceded by the prayers which old Wairehu read slowly and reverently.

These isolated subalpine dwellers are a pious people, at any rate in observance of religious ritual, and in the earnestness and simplicity of their devotions they truly are patterns to the pakeha. Not an evening falls without these prayers and hymns in the gargoyled wharepuni. As the people sit there, chanting their soft solemn music, some swaying slightly to and fro as they sing, we observe with much interest their varying types. Some are dark indeed, with narrowed eyes peering out beneath heavy projecting brows, but most of them show the fine open cast of face, with large features, which distinguishes the Ngati-Tuwharetoa and their cousins the Ngati-Raukawa. Many are very fair of skin, and there are two or three women whose beautifully thick and long hair shines with a lustre golden in the firelight; they are of pure Maori blood, though almost as light in complexion as ourselves. They are urukehu or fair-hair; the tradition goes that their remote ancestors were a light-skinned tribe called the Whanau-a-Rangi, which in the pakeha tongue is “Offspring of Heaven.”

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A sightly house this within as well as without; its panels and rafters are brightly painted and scrolled, and the foot of the central pillar, the putoko-manawa, is wrought into a carved and tattooed head, the effigy of the tribal founder; his pawa-shell eyes glare belligerently at us over the fire. On the walls hang weapons of the past and present—taiaha and meré and a long-handled tomahawk, deadly weapons all in skilled Maori hands, and a dozen or so of rifles and shot guns.

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Now come the stories, for night after night in the warm and social meeting-house the tales of the times of old are repeated, until every member of the tribe to the youngest is familiar with the unwritten history of the clan and the folk-lore of the land.

And first of all is told the tale of these nearby fire-peaks. Long ago there were magical doings in these parts, the like of which could only happen in old Maoridom, and the story of Ngatoro-from-the-Sky and his wonderful travels and godlike page 14 deeds satisfyingly accounts for the presence of the volcanoes that rumble menacingly above us.

Wairehu takes the matted floor, and girding his blanket about his waist to give free play to his sinewy, tattooed right arm, he tells, like a Skald of old, the saga of Ngatoro and his travels through an enchanted land.

Ngatoro-i-rangi was the sacred Ariki, the high priest of the Arawa canoe crew, and when that Polynesian ship's company landed at Maketu, in the Bay of Plenty, five hundred years ago, he set forth to explore the strange new land. When he reached the foot of the mountain range now known as Tongariro, he decided to ascend it in order to spy out the country, for, like the modern surveyor, the ancient Maori land-seeker and path-finder always made for the high points of the country in his journeyings. With one or two companions he climbed to the summit of the central volcano, the Ngauruhoe peak, and while he was there a snowstorm suddenly befell, and he was like to die with the freezing cold. In his dire extremity he exerted his marvellous powers, and he prayed in a loud page 15 voice for the fire of the gods. He cried to his priestess sisters in the far north, saying:

“E Kuiwai e! Haungaroa e! Ka riro au i te tonga! Haria mai he ahi moku!” (“O Kuiwai! O Haungaroa! I am borne away in the cold south wind—I perish from the cold! Send me fire to warm me!”)

And straightway his priestess sisters heard him, and they appealed to the fire-demons Te Pupu and Te Hoata—personifications these of volcanic and thermal heat—and the saving fire was sent, by way of White Island and Rotorua and intermediate spots where the hot springs boil up to-day. The saving fire reached the perishing Ariki there on the mountain-top, and his freezing body gained fresh life, and he and his companions were saved. The fire which was his salvation burst forth at the top of Ngauruhoe—and that is why there is a fuming crater there to this day. And from the words riro (carried away or seized) and tonga (south wind) which he used in his cry to the goddesses of the sacred fire, came the name Tongariro, which was bestowed upon these grand volcanic peaks. For, the name Tongariro formerly included in Maori usage all three peaks—Tongariro page 16 Range, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu—all three were considered as one, the sacred kopu, the belly of this island-fish, the abode of the fire-gods, ever afterwards to be regarded as the holy of holies of the Arawa nation.

As for Ngauruhoe, that name also holds a story, said Wairehu. When Ngatoro-i-Rangi, freezing in his tapa-cloth garments there on the mountain-top, made his urgent cry for help, he slew a female slave as an offering to the gods—“he whakahere ki te atua”—in order to give additional mana to his prayer. This slave, who was a personal attendant and food-bearer, was named Auruhoe. When the god-sent flames of life burst forth, Ngatoro threw the body of the slave into the blazing crater, and that was how the volcano came to bear its present name, which is Auruhoe in the mouths of some of the Maoris of the south Taupo country.

And from that time to this the flaming of Ngauruhoe has been a mighty sign of portent for the dwellers on the plains below. Whenever the volcano burst into eruption the Taupo people said to each other, “Lo! the Atua is giving us a sign and a command. Let us go forth and make war upon the sea-coast dwellers.” For generation after generation this omen of the mountain-gods was obeyed. Ngati-Tuwharetoa in truth were a war-loving clan; and when the distant tribes heard that Ngauruhoe was hurling forth fiery ash and vast clouds of black smoke fear fell upon them and they hastily strengthened their palisades, for well they knew the warriors of Taupo would presently appear.
Ngatoro, the Old Man narrated, was an explorer of amazing energy, and gifted with all the strange powers of a wizard. He scaled the loftiest mountains with ease, and as we have seen, he could call fire to his aid through the very earth. And listen to the story of what befell his land-seeking rival, the venturesome Hape-ki-tua-rangi, who came trudging across the ranges and plains from the far East Coast, thinking to found a nation in the heart of the great island.

The Place where the Sky was Dark
As Ngatoro stood there near the lofty peak of Ngauruhoe, viewing the wonderful new land spread all about him, he beheld with the god-aided vision of the seer and page 18 the magician a strange chief and his party of warriors and slaves approaching from the East. It was Hape-from-beyond-the-Sky, seeking land for himself and his tribe. Ngatoro boiled with godlike anger; he was the first discoverer of this enchanted country, the belly of the fish of Maui, and he would brook no others in his newly-gotten territory. Hape's company was undesirable; no neighbours were welcome in the land of Taupo. So Ngatoro betook him to his incantations; and he called in a great roaring voice—the voice of a god—saying in tones of thunder: “Get you gone, O stranger! This country is for me, for Ngatoro! Depart whence you came!” But Hape, heeding not those menacing words, heard like the roll of an approaching thunderstorm, came marching on across the tussock plains.

Ngatoro recited his heaven-compelling incantations; he called upon the gods of the sky and the gods of the under-world, and chiefly upon Ruaimoko, the dread demon of volcanoes. And strange and terrible things befell.

The sky suddenly became dark as night, and out burst a huge sheet of flame from page 19 Ngauruhoe's fiery pit, and the smoke and ashes from the volcano were borne over the land to the east by a mighty rushing wind. And then, upon this scene of gloom and terror, a vast black cloud swept down over the newcomers' heads and fell a life-destroying storm of sleet and snow. The frozen death of the huka descended upon Hape and his party, and they perished there upon those dreadful plains. They perished everyone. “Kaitoa! It served them right,” said Wairehu, “for persisting in their march when they saw that my ancestor Ngatoro was already in possession of the country!” And from that day to this the desert where Hape perished has been known as Te Rangi Po—the Place Where the Sky is Dark.

Certainly it is well enough named, that tract of true desert, admitted the pakeha listeners. The Rangi-Po is a sterile, bare, forbidding place wherein for broad spaces even the hardy tussock declines to grow. A bleak, shivery gale-swept plain, to be passed as quickly as possible. It looks a blasted heath, lying even to this day under the curse of the gods.

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Of Pihanga, too, we hear, yon softly-rounded mountain of green forest, above Roto-a-Ira lake, and of her beauty of form which captivated the mountain-gods of old. For mountains were strangely like human beings in those wonderful dim days when all the world was in faerie land; they loved and they fought like mortals. It was over fair Pihanga that Tongariro and Taranaki quarrelled, and titanic indeed was the battle of the volcanoes, ending in the expulsion of Taranaki from his mighty seat on the plains between Tongariro and snowy Ruapehu, and his flight to the far west coast of the island. So to-day Lady Pihanga—so obviously of the female sex, says the Maori, for look you, her shape!—sits complacently there accepting the love of her volcanic husband, in the long streamers of cloud and sulphurous vapours that are borne to her on the wings of the strong south wind. It is the mihi of the mountains, the loving greetings in upper air. And when, sometimes for days at a time, the summits of the ranges are veiled in mist and fog, the Maoris of Otukou and Papakai say: “Behold, our ancestors, our father and page 21 mother are greeting each other in the clouds of heaven. Their ancient love revives, they embrace one another as in the days of old.”

The Man Whose Thoughts Were Wings
“Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
I like him not; such men are dangerous.”

Those were the lines that went through my mind as I observed one of Wairehu's visitors, a restless-eyed gaunt fellow, by repute a tohunga and bush medicine-man; the kind of man who made new cults and fanatic religions. He followed Wairehu in the story-telling, and in a curious half-chanting voice he told of the wizardly powers of an ancestor on his mother's side. That warlock forefather of his lived far away down on the West Coast, on the Waitotara River. In the valley of this river there were several great forts, built on high hills, separated by deep swamps and bends of the stream. The wizard of the Waitotara, however, had no difficulty in passing from hill-village to village of his tribe, for he flew through the air. His name was Tama-ahua-rere-rangi, which means “The page 22 Man Who Flies Across the Heavens.” He did not possess wings; no, he projected himself through the air by the impulse of his amazing mana, his innate magic influence. A thought was to him as wings; he had first but to resolve that he would fly to such and such a place and invoke his gods, and lo! he was there. But alas! suddenly he lost his gift. His powers of flight deserted him, all in the space between dusk-time and daylight, and he that had been as a god now had to trudge the earth like a common mortal when he travelled from village to village.

“How did he lose that strange power?” asked one of the young women around the glowing brazier.

“My girl,” said the saturnine one, “it was all through you women that he became flightless like the kiwi. He married him a wife one night, and in the morning he that had been a god in himself was but an ordinary man of the earth. His thoughts were wings no longer. That is why my ancestor Tama lost his magical powers. The thought comes to me, we men would all be gods if we had no women to despoil us of our strength. For myself, I despise all women. Would that my ancestor had page 23 done the same! I might now be a greater wonder than the pakeha airmen who cross lands and seas in their flying ships—for I would need no ship.”

“E tama!” exclaimed Wairehu. “If your ancestor had been like you, my son, where would you have been? Now answer me that!”

“Pah!” said Ripeka of the coppery hair, with a gesture of her pipe towards the misanthropic Cassius. “His talk is all rupahu—the boast and brag that hide a disappointment in love. For was it not he who but three days ago besought my sister, the widow, in Tokaanu for a share of her sleeping-mat—which she refused him, having a pleasanter husband in view!”

And the laugh was against Cassius that time.

The Legend of Miru and the Heavenly Maid
Now came a story ancient beyond compare; it took us into the misty past when the ancestors of the Maori dwelt far away in the isles of the equatorial Pacific, indeed farther back still to the tropic lands of Indonesia. The old man Tamaira, the genealogist and poet of his tribe, passed his page 24 pipe to his neighbour to keep alight, loosed his blanket to his waist, and narrated the saga of Miru the fairy chief and wizard and the beautiful maid Hine-rangi.

In the long ago, said Tamaira, there was a certain man of this world and he dwelt in his village at Karewa, in Hawaiki, the ancient home of the Maori. He took a wife; in due course a child was born, then another child. Both of these children were girls. The elder the parents named Hine-rangi (“Heavenly Maid”); the younger they named Hine-mai-te-uru (“Girl from the West”). Hine-rangi was set apart by her parents and the tribe as a puhi (virgin); she was not permitted to indulge in early love-affairs like the other young people. She was given a separate house, and in this house she lived, some little distance from the others in the pa. There she slept by herself, this maiden Hine-rangi.

Now there was a certain man of the Patu-paiarehe people, and his name was Miru. He beheld the beautiful Hine-rangi, so treasured by her people, and the thought came to him that he would secure the girl of this world (te ao maori nei) as his wife. So by night he went cautiously into the pa page 25 of the Maori tribe and entered the house of Hine-rangi, and he set his spell of love upon the girl, and they slept together. Before morning came he departed as secretly as he had come. Next night he returned, and the fairy lover and Hine-rangi again reposed together. This continued for many nights; such was the manner of this secret marriage. The night-travelling lover was never seen by any of Hine-rangi's people.

In course of time the people observed the condition of Hine-rangi, and it became known among all the tribe that their puhi was presently to become a mother. There was great excitement on this discovery being made, and intense curiosity was aroused as to who Hine-rangi's lover could possibly be, for none had been seen to approach the abode. Everyone asked who could Hine-rangi's husband be, but no one in the pa could answer the question.

At last the question was put to the girl herself: “E kui, nowhea to tane inahoki kua hapu koe?” (“O woman, whence came your husband by whom you are with child?”) Hine-rangi's reply was: “Kaore koutou e kite i taku tane. E hara ia i page 26 tenei ao.” (“You cannot see my husband; he is not a man of this world.”)

Then the people, more puzzled than ever, considered how they might discover this mysterious lover of her whom they had dedicated as a puhi. At last they thought of a plan whereby they could lay hold of him. They resolved to cover up all the openings by which light was admitted to Hine-rangi's house, so that the lover would not know when the day was at hand.

Evening came, and the dark night, and the time came when the mysterious lover stole unseen into the house of Hine-rangi. The people silently surrounded the dwelling, and waited until they knew the pair must be asleep. Then they fastened the door and the window and plugged up all the openings in the house that could admit daylight. When they had done this not a streak of light could penetrate into Hine-rangi's abode.

The time of morning came, and Miru awoke, and he thought that this must be a very long night, but the interior of the house was still in profound darkness, so he turned to slumber again. The morning went on, and high noon came. The sun was page 27 directly overhead, but it was still like the dead of night within the house.

Now all at once the people drew back the door and the window and rushed into the house. The astonished Miru leaped from the couch, and the people saw him and seized him, and so at last they knew who Hine-rangi's strange lover was.

This was the beginning of Miru's life with his wife Hine-rangi in the sight of all the people. He was received as a friend and a tribesman, and he remained there with his wife. Presently a child was born to them, a son, and he was named Tonga-te-uru. The Patu-paiarehe chief continued to dwell there in the pa, and in time Hine-rangi gave birth to another son, who was named Uru-makawe.

Now the thought came to Miru that he would return to the home of his own people. So he said to his father-in-law, “E koro! Come you and your tribe, and escort me to my own land, to greet my people there.” To this the father-in-law agreed, but he was not willing that Hine-rangi should leave his home and go away with Miru, for he did not wish her to live in that strange place.

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A large party of the tribe assembled, and they departed to escort Miru to his home, and Hine-rangi bade farewell to her husband and remained in the pa, but the younger sister Hine-mai-te-uru accompanied the party of travellers.

When the party arrived at the home of Miru in that other land they were taken to a house which stood in the pa. It was an exceedingly large house, and in it were assembled all the Patu-paiarehe people to greet the strangers. This house, which was called “Hui-te-rangiora,” was a place where-in all the sacred wisdom of the people was taught—the rites of the makutu wizardry, the spells of the atahu (love-charms), and all manner of priestly knowledge. In it also were taught such games as the whai (cat's cradle, string games), the titi-torea or game with throwing-sticks, the working of the wooden marionettes that were caused to imitate haka dances, etc., and other diversions. The art of beautiful wood-carving too was taught.

Every desirable kind of knowledge was imparted to scholars in this great house. And the tino tohunga, the chief teacher and page 29 expert of that house, was Miru, the Patu-paiarehe husband of Hine-rangi.

When the father-in-law of Miru beheld all the wonderful works of that house; when he saw that it was a place wherein all kinds of magic and wisdom were taught, he made request that Miru should instruct him in all the karakia and other sacred matters that he knew. To this proposal Miru assented, and he taught the man from this world the priestly lore desired. In return for this knowledge the father-in-law gave his younger daughter Hine-mai-te-uru to Miru as wife; she was payment for all the karakia which Miru had taught him.

Then he and his people prepared to leave the land of Miru. Before departure the father wept with his daughter, Hine-mai-te-uru, whom he was leaving to be a wife to the Patu-paiarehe, and he chanted over her a lament, for he knew that he would see her no more.

Then the father-in-law of Miru returned to this world. Hine-rangi was told that her sister had been given to Miru as his wife, and she wept for the fairy husband who was now separated from her and living in his own land with her sister Hine-mai-te-uru.

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The thought came now to the father of Hine-rangi that he would build a large house similar to that which he had seen in the home of Miru, in that other world. The house was built, and it was named after that fairy hall “Hui-te-rangiora,” which means the assembly place of all beautiful things, the home of peace and happiness. Then in that house the old man taught his grandson Tonga-te-uru all the sacred wisdom and occult rites he had learned from the chief tohunga of the Patu-paiarehe. And he chanted this song over his grandson:

Abide there, O son, in Hui-te-rangiora,
The dwelling of health and life,
The place whence came the ancient games,
The game of throwing-sticks, the devices worked with strings,
The diversion of the dancing marionettes;
The house of wisdom,
The abode of knowledge,
The secrets of life and death, O Son.

And the young man Tonga-te-uru, having learned all the charms and prayers and ceremonies and all the games of skill that he had learned from Miru, remained in the house to be a chief teacher and tohunga among the people. That is page 31 how the people of this world came to possess the knowledge of all these desirable things; they were preserved in this house of learning “Hui-te-rangiora.” It was the first great whare-kura or lodge of instruction of our Maori people, and from that time to this there has been a “Hui-te-rangiora” among us, and even at this day our chieftainess Te Rohu, the widow of Rewi Maniapoto, lives in a house of that name on the banks of the Puniu River.

Notes
This legend of Miru and Hine-rangi bears the stamp of great antiquity and is of much significance to the ethnologist, for it describes the contact between the remote ancestors of the Maori and a people apparently more advanced in culture. In a number of Maori-Polynesian traditions the underworld, in other words the home of a strange race, is mentioned as the place of origin of various arts and crafts, such as carving and tattooing, and of occult knowledge. Here the people of this strange land are described as fairies. Miru is sometimes spoken of as one of the guardian atua of the underworld or the place of departed souls. The name indeed takes us very far back in Polynesian origins. In Hindu mythology Meru is the abode of the god Vishnu, it is the top of a mountain of enormous height, the Olympus of the Indian people.