Another Version of the Story

Te Ao Hou, March 1966, Page 30

Another Version of the Story by Harry Dansey Which is the correct version of a fairy tale? Perhaps it depends on which fairy told you the story. Or which fairy told the person who told the person who told the person who told you. I do not know the fairy who whispered the story of Hatupatu and Kurangaituku to my people in the long ago. But I know who the person was who told the person who told me, and when I read the story in ‘Te Ao Hou’*Te Ao Hou's version, published in the last issue, was based on the well-known story in Sir George Grey's ‘Polynesian Mythology’.—Ed. and found it was not quite the same as the one I knew, I felt moved to back my fairy against the rest. Hence this article. Perhaps the only justification for recording another version of a folk story is that the circumstances in which it was handed down are themselves interesting. I feel that this is so in this instance. The version I record here was told to me by my father, the late Harry Delamere Dansey, about 1930, when, as a boy, I went with him to Atiamuri and saw Hatupatu's rock. He had had the story from his grandfather, Ihakara Kahuao, many years before so my version was gained in the time-honoured way, by word of mouth from father to son. Ihakara's main home was Maroa-nui-a-Tia, north of Taupo. His daughter, Wikitoria Ngamihi Kahuao, was married to Rotorua's postmaster, Roger Delamere Dansey, and they and their children lived at Rotorua. My father was their second son. Now about every three months Ihakara would come to Rotorua from Maroa to see his daughter and her family and to get supplies to take back to Maroa. After his visit he would load his cart with flour, sugar and tea and go back to the bush some 50 miles or so. During the holidays my father would go with him. That journey—now an hour's run by car—used to take three days. Old Timi, the cart horse, moved but slowly and where the road was steep the cart would have to be partly unloaded and several trips made. For example, the hill known as Te Tuahu which is just south of Atiamuri, needed three trips before all of the load was at the top. At night the old man and the boy would sleep under the cart. By the camp fire at night and as they journeyed along during the day, Ihakara would tell his grandson the stories of the places they passed, Parekarangi. Te Tangihanga, Tahunatara, Te Ana-a-Tuhape. Pohaturoa, Atiamuri. In particular my father liked the story of Hatupatu. All his life — he died in 1942 — he would never pass Hatupatu's rock without pausing to place a sprig of fern in the hole on the northern side of the rock in which Hatupatu was said to have hidden. In 1929 the story was told in a newspaper and, as it was a different version from that which he had learned as a boy, my father wrote the one he knew. This is the story which follows, taken from his notes which are in my possession and dated 24th September, 1929. It is prefixed by a note saying the story was as told to him by Ihakara Kahuao in 1884. My father would then have been 10 years of age. This then is Ihakara's version of the story of Hatupatu and Kurangaituku.