Fairy Tales.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 303, 23 December 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)

Fairy Tales.

CELT AND MAORI.-—MAGIC

OF LONE PLACES.

(By J.c.)

Till] island of enchantment in J. 31. Barric's play "Mary Rose," a place of faerie and witchery, which "called to people" and cast a strange spell over them, would not have seemed ail unreal place to the old-time Maori. New Zealand has its stories of charmed islets, magic-haunted forests, fairy-peopled mountain tops, sacred pools and streams; trees with voices heard in the night. Belief in those tales that belong to a twilight age and a poetic race has not vanished. There aie old men and women still living whose minds are full of such stories and tho lore of tapu things. Modern Inventions, all tho excitements and stress of pakelia ways, have not entirely obliterated the old trail. People who have lived most of their lives in the bush and among the mountains and in other more or less secluded places lave a mental background of mysticism and of nature-veneration. The Fairy Wife. There are curiously close resemblances between many Celtic and Maori tales of the fairy folk. One class of story concerns the marriages of fairies and mortals. I have been reading ■ again some of the Maori-like legendry of the Hebrides and the Western Highlands, and one of these traditions is the story of the "Fairy Flag" of Dunvegan. Castle on the Isle of Skye, that wonderful old historic pile, the home of MacLeod of [MacLeod, interest in which was revived recently by the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York. The. legend, is that the chief of Dunvegan many generations ago married a fairy wife. Fairies never die and never grow old. But a fairy wife, or a fairy husband, must sooner or later leave the mortal partner and return to the place of the ancient people, between two worlds. The fairy wife of the MacLeod had been married for 20 years when the summons came. As she flew away she dropped her silken robe. It is preserved in the castle to this day; it is the fairy flag of Dunvegan, and is invested with magic mana in crises of the family. So goes the Highland legend. Here we have, for one parallel, the legend of Te Niniko and his fairy wife, a story I heard at Waitotara, on tho West Coast. The Ngarauru tribe localised it there; I am inclined to think it preserves a dim memory of the more ancient people whom they dispossessed of the coast lands and drove into the bush. To Niniko was a young chief with whom a girl of the Patupaiarehe or fairy tribe fell in love. She saw him from tho edge of the forest when the people of his village were engaged in festivities, and she admired his handsome appearance and his spirit and skill in leading the haka dances. She resolved to make him her husband, and one night she visited him in his whare, which was a little apart from the other houses in the village. Te Niniko was delighted with his beautiful bride, but was mystified by her disappearance before daylight came. She returned each night and vanished with the first streaks of dawn. He wished to show her to his tribe, but she refused; she did not wish to be seen. At last—by a stratagem which appears in numerous Maori stories, the closing up of all the places by which daylight could enter the house -*-the shy fairy was deceived into remaining until long after daylight, and was seen by the assembled people when she rushed out, weeping at the trick which had been played on her. She was borne away in a friendly mist which enveloped her, and never again did the grieving and remorseful Niniko behold his lovely Patupaiarehe. Unlike the elf-lady of Dunvegan, she did not drop her flax robe as a keepsake. Probably she did not wear one. There are other tales of fairy wives, who invariably sooner or later returned to the enchanted forests or the mountains. There are stories also of the fairy men of the mountains who came down by night to Maori homes on the bush edge and carried off girls to be their wives. The tradition of Ruarangi and his young wife Tawhai-atu, and of the fairy chief who cast a spell over the woman and stole her away to the summit of Pirongia Mountain, is an olden story of the Waipa Valley and the King Country. But I have not heard that any such tangible souvenir of mortal-and-fairy unions as the magic flag of Dunvegan Castle has been preserved in Maoridom. There are, it is true, occasional human links between the twilight folk aiyl tho Maori. We used to see one such, at Kihikihi, in the Waikato. She was an albino woman, who lived on the Puniu bank. A curious figure, with her flaxen hair, her dead white skin, and her weak blue eyes that blinked in 4he sunlight. Her chin and lips were tattooed; the blue lines contrasted in a rather ghastly way with her unnaturally white complexion. The popular story was that she was the offspring of a Ngati-Mania-poto woman and a fairy chief who haunted the Rangitoto Ranges, in the King Country. Albinos arc known as '"korako," a word which expresses also the intense whiteness of silica rock in the Thermal Springs country. Bush Folk and Bush Voices. In some places in the forested and craggy parts of tho land it seems natural that there should be a hidden older race, some enchanted people of the leaves. Mountains so peopled in Maori folk-lore and poetry are many; such places as misty Moehau, the lofty terminal of the Coromandcl Peninsula. 1 have curious, almost indescribable memories of such places. Pirongia Mountain is one. A certain awareness of unseen presences is strong in tho i deep and shadowy bush. One has felt something of the Maori belief that tho wood spirits are on the watch in quiet places in the forest, in the overarching ; roof of foliage, the festoons of creepers, the flax-like bushes of Kowharewhare dangling from the tree forks; the nikau palms, the drooping fern tree fronds in the wild and solemn silences. I remember how all the forest seemed to have - eyes and cars; and in the jnidnight

watches, when tlic camp fire liad burned low, and the tree trunks stood like dark sentries posted about tlie bivouac, the bush voices were heard. The mopoke's "kou-kou" was not the only one; there were little sounds among the branches of the treetops,' and from behind the mossy boles. Sounds of creaking and rubbing branches and halfwaking bird life, perhaps, but to the imaginative mind, and not only the Maori mind, tlicy might well be the stealthy movements and cautious voices of the fairy foresters on their scouting and foraging. Little sounds, too, hke children's voices. The dropping tinkle and gurgle of rivulets among the stones down in the dusky gullies account perhaps for this low music and conversation of the bush.

But there are forests where I cannot imagine the Patupaiarehe could find friendly cover. Tho cold beech woods of the sub-alpine country in the South, the foodless, birdless bush of the Bullcr and the Upper Grey and the coalmine ranges. You must go to tho coast forests of tho lake shores for those bird voices and tales of fairy bushmen. No more could the fairy folk haunt tho hard, inhospitable forests than they could Australia's plains and "ragged penury of shade." Paul Wenz wrote of the Australian in relation to folk-lore: "No fairy could live on the burning plains (nor haunt the miserly shade of tho trees and bushes." To which one might add that fairies and snakes, elves and bluegums do not seem likely to agree. Spirit of the Rocks. There are rocky, high places that seem to have been built by or for the Patupaiarehe. Those tors and walls and cave-riddled crags of the Banks Peninsula and the Seven Sleepers and their sister hills of crumbled lava which ring Lyttelton Harbour about are the places of a fairy age. Legends and songs I gathered from the last of the grey tradition-keepers of Ngai-Tahu give the needed authentic touch of enchantment to those parapets and towers of volcano land. The remnants of the ancient bush half-screen the caves, make witcliy bowers of the gullies, small trees with knobby elbows, searching fingers, tentacle-like roots. Tho wind makes curious high whistling noises there, about tho weathered rock castles; tho rliyolite cliffs show protuberances like wizard gargoyles. There aforetime was heard, as at Tara-te-rehu, high above Akaroa, according to an olden song, "the sound of tho fairy flute, the music of tho mountains, the putorino music that thrilled one through and through." Tree Witchery. There are some trees and bush fruits in certain places which the Patupaiarehe or other people of the mists had reserved for themselves. On the higher parts of Pirongia Mountain, towards the haunted peak called Hihikiwi, the tawhara or kiekie fruit, enveloped in the sword-leaf bunches in the tree forks and on tho great branches, is the perquisite of the fairy folk. Should you be tempted to eat of ripe tawhara there, know that it is likely to make you strangely drowsy, and if you fall off to sleep there you will be in the power of the fairy chiefs Te Rangipouri and Whanawliana, who still live there, centuries old. At any rate, such is a cautionary word from the folk-talk of the old people of the Waipa banks. Far down at the other end of New Zealand, on Stewart Island, there is a belief that the kotukutuku, the native fuchsia, is tapu to the spirits of tho bush. We were cruising round the shores of Paterson Inlet, in a whale boat, and on landing at a little bay to boil the billy at mid-day, old Mohi, our Maori companion and pilot, warned me in a halfjoking way about that banned kotukutuku. It would not do to use it for firewood; food cooked with it would cause temporary paralysis of the legs, a kind of fuchsia intoxication, in fact. So we hunted for other fuel, or rather let Mohi hunt; though tho beachfringing kotukutuku was tho most convenient and driest wood. The reason for or origin or tapu was a mystery; perhaps some tohunga invented it just to give trouble. Charm Against Fairydom. The legendary dislike of the shy forest dwellers for tho sacred Maori colour red and for the steam from cooking ovens is illustrated in several folk-tales. In a version of tho story of Ruarangi and his wife which I heard from an old man of To Kopua who delighted in talcs and songs of the past, the late Pou-patate, the woman's escape from the love spell placed on her by the fairy chief of the Pirongia tribe of Patupaiarehe was contrived by means not only of many and long incantations by the tohungas, but by painting her house and the fence around it with kokowai or red ochre, and also painting her body all over with kokowai. To complete the charm by uncovering the food ovens in the evening when the fairy raiders appeared so that the steam arose in volumes, the woman sat in the midst of the steam, so that the fairy lover could not approach. He and his band of foresters stood outside the charmed circle and chanted a song of disappointment and sorrow. This is a part of the fairy chief Rangipouri's lament (I translate from Pou-patate's recital): — I weep for Tawliai-atu, The woman whom I lons to bear Hack to my mountain home. sacred mist is round hor now, Tho tapa's guardian spoil ; I fear that cloudy barrier. I yearn to clasp my Maori wife, Oli lhat love's charm would come anew, To hind her to I'irnngln's height! Alas! we part, we'll meet no more. Origin of Fairy Tribes. In this and other songs, as preserved by a very few of the old people, the words of the fairies are given, of course, iu Maori, the names of the fairy chiefs lire Maori, and sometimes tribal names arc mentioned. All this indicates that the Patupaiarehe were originally fugitive broken tribes of Maoris who had been driven into the forests and who lived there for generations, a furtive, timid people who lived on the products of the bush. They gradually came to regard themselves as a separate race from the Maori tribes outside. In the Rotorua country there arc traditions of a very ancient vanished race whose tribes were called Tururu-mauku, Raiipongaoheohe, and other names derived from natural objects. There are traditions there also of fairy people who lived 011 Ngongotaha Mountain and other ranges; these probably were identical with the ancient aborigines whose

scattered clans took to a bush life when the dominating descendants of the Arawa canoe crew became numerous. It is -rather curious that in the Urcwera Country, with its tribes of foresters and its traditions of centuries of life in a densely-wooded land, there is not a wealth of fairy folk-lore. There is more of that class of legendry in the Waikato and the Arawa Country and Taupo. When mysterious sounds were heard at night in a bush camp in the Urcwera Mountains, I have heard a man say, "The Patupaiarehe are out to-night." But there was less fear or talk of the Patupaiarehe or Turehu there in the depths of the bush than in the outer country. The reason no doubt is that the Urewera are themselves part of the forest; there are no terrors there for them; they have always been in the bush. It was their friend and refuge from ancient times. The Citadel of Tapu. Earth magic, the faerie spirit, the sense of invisible presences crowding in upon humankind is strong in such a place as Mokoia Island. I do not know of another place in our land which seems so populated with the memories of the past. Indeed, I might well have written populated with souls. I have heard from the old folks such stories, told with such obvious implicit belief, about the ghost-haunted island, that even in the broad daylight there seemed —without much strain on the imagination —a living presence of Tapu and the unseen. Once, sitting on the ferny summit of Mokoia, 600 ft above the lake, on a quiet summer day, with a good old friend who now lies buried there, part of his ancestral soil, the silcnce of the magic island became almost oppressive. "Once," lie said, "all this island which we called of old the Holy Isle of Tinirau, was covered with people. There were homes and cultivations right up to this hilltop called To Tihi o Tama-whakaikai (the citadel of the Sons of Abundant Food). Everywhere except down below us there and in the steep southern side, facing Rotorua town, where we always left the small bush to the birds and the other people of the forest. There was food enough on this island for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. And now—it is all a burying ground, a place of spirits. They are all around us here, everywhere. I do not fear them, because I have the sacred knowledge, the mana tapu that enables me to go anywhere. But there are very few of our people even to-day who will move about tliis island by night. -They arc afraid the ghosts will reach out and clutch them from tho trees and the I shadows."