RIDING ON A WHALE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 77, 14 March 1935, Page 6

RIDING ON A WHALE

Interesting Maori Story ANCIENT POWER OVER FISH “If you’re looking for a fish story, Utere’s a good one for you,’’ said Bishop Bennett when telling the Hastings Historical Society last evening the legend of Paikea, who is said to have made a practice of riding on the back of a whale which he had caught and tamed. “It is not such an extraordinary story’ as it may seem,’’ the Bishop added. Dr. Fox, formerly of Waipawa, and now a missionary in Melanesia, tells us from his own knowledge that the tohungas of the.islands have some mysterious and wonderful power over fish, and that some of them have their own pet fish, something like a shark, which they call and take out of the water. The doctor has said: 1 can’t explain it. I can only say that I Lave seen it with my own eyes. “May there not be some wonderful mana, some mystical power, that the Maoris had in those days?’’ said the Bishop. “We have over-civilised some of the Maoris, and perhaps as a result they have lost the powers that they used to have. You Europeans want to see two and two make four all the way through, and cannot understand these mystical things.’’