BEFORE THE MAORIS.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12771, 18 April 1910, Page 4

BEFORE THE MAORIS.

Writing in the Sydney "Telegraph" with regard to Mr. Clement Wragge's discoveries in the Bay of Islands, "Q" says that they will doubtless be held by some to' confirm the theory that when the Maoris of the Great Migration stepped from their canoes they found other inhabitants already here, "the poople of the land," as they called in Maori lore. The Maori traditions are rich in reference to fairies with white skins and fair hair. These, fairies, legend says, ware living in New Zealand when the Maoris came and were divided into three tribes, "Descendants of the Red One," "Descendantsof the Albino," and "Descendants of the Dimly Seen," the last-named of which is a title of unique fitness as the designation of a fairy race. The Maoris claim to have learned the art of net-making from these . fairies, who, being makers of nets and eaters of fish must havo had a distinct corporeality. Besides the fairies there wer© elves and ogres and tree-sprites that haunted the bush in their thousands. It is agreed that the fairies and such wooddwelling peoples were really remnants of a conquered race, surviving thus in the midst of the conquerors, upon whom from mountain cavern or gloomy forest, the dispossessed "people of the land" struck in retaliation and revenge, until they came tb be feared as beings something less or more than human. Possibly in this way, it bas been suggested, the original inhabitants of New Zealand stUl survive in the Af aori fairy tale. In the very forests which Mr. Wragge has been exploring legend locates a yeUow-haircd tribe of cave-dwelling fairies called the Karitehe, who often seized Maori girls when out flower-gathering, the girls so captured never more returning to their people. It may be. urged that the Maoris brought their fairy lore with them from Hawaiki, as they brought the sweet potato and their dogs when they set forth to voyage to a new Jand in their great canoes, indeed, one Maori legend actually relates that they carried tho fairies with them in a special canoe. - But there is other evidence to show that New Zealand was a populated oountry when the Maoris descended upon it. The people, of the country are described in the folk lore, which has passed on froni tongue to tongue, as a small-bodied race who ; were easily conquered. White-skinned and yellow-haired, they had no affinities with the Malays ahd seem to hare been some far-wandered branch of the fair races, who reached the dominion in th© oourse of a forgotten migration, now hidden in the mists of time. Their story may be written in stone in. Mr. Wragge's sculptures, and if it is it will add a chapter of vivid interest to the history of the country,