MAORI FAIRIES

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 10, 11 July 1936, Page 20

MAORI FAIRIES

' (Original.) ' .. A tiny brown fairy lay on the bank of a' lake. The pukeko was the first to see it. He came -out from among the crimson swamp-weed to inspect this strange object. He walked carefully round it, bobbing his red head up and down, and arching his long, black, shiny, neck. , ~-, "Whatever can it be?" he wondered. "It has wings,' so it must be a bird. I shall ask the heron."

The white heron was standing sleepily in the lake on one leg; but he soon woke up 'when he heard the excited voice of the pukeko.

He carefully examined the small creature. ' .-•■■. .

"It's a water-baby," he said at last, "but I wonder why it has wings?" Just then a> flpck of emerald; parrakeets came to rest in a kowhai tree,; close by. They, too, chattered excitedly about the newcomer, v .;

"I know," said one, "It's'-a niqa's "baby that hasn't got its feathers yet."

There was a loiid laugh at this, remark; arid to their intense surprise the baby laughed, too. ' : / '

Its laughter went bubbling and tinkling into the air, and broke into thousands of pieces, each vof' which-be-came a tiny, laughing, brown fairy, and that is proba£> how Maori fairies began. ' ; ' ■ '/JAN" (9): Lower Hutt. ' ,