OF TANIWHA, NGARARA AND HOW PAEROA GOT ITS NAME by LEO FOWLER I had always thought that the town of Paeroa got its name from the long ridge of hills behind it pae-roa. But I was wrong. I found that there was another and older meaning to the name. There is a very old, old story about the naming of Paeroa. I learned the story first, many years ago, from Hoane Te Huia of Paeroa, and later heard other versions from other old Maoris of my acquaintance. I don't know what the name of the place was before it was called Paeroa. Some have told me it was Ruawea, some Ohinemuri, but these are district names, as far as I know. Anyway, in a cave near the hill now known as Turner's Hill, near the present town of Paeroa there lived a taniwha, or ngarara, named “Urea.” I have no certain knowledge as to what was the form in which this taniwha liked best to manifest himself. Most accounts agree that it was in the form of a gigantic lizard. Ngarara, or taniwha, are queer creatures and are apt to change their form in a most haphazard and perplexing manner. The Ngati Tamatera had another taniwha named “Tupe to Tauhai” which, when it wished to warn the tribe of impending invasion, would take the form of a dolphin and gambol in the river until its movements had been reported to all the chiefs. But when the Ngati Tamatera went forth to war, this same taniwha appeared as a blue cloud, and, in that form, led them to battle, and invariably (they claim) to victory. There was yet another taniwha in the Ohinemutu district called “Pukeko” which always took the form of that bird and gave mournful cries throughout the night when the death of a chief was imminent. Personally, I have never seen a taniwha, nor I expect have readers. I have met some who told me they had seen one, and they were people I had every reason to respect and to believe. My old friend Nepia Pomare, (a Ngapuhi and my Maori godfather) once told me that the taniwha on our gold sovereigns was not unlike a taniwha he had once seen. This taniwha, whose name he could not utter, (so tapu was it) had a body very like that of the taniwha on the sovereign, but the wings were only partly formed and the head was the head of a manaia. Some of my older Maori friends have told me that the manaia itself was, originally, a taniwha. Others will say that manaia is simply a carved representation of a human head seen sideways, such as a “koruru” or “ruru.” Colonel Jim Ferris once told me that, during World War I he and his platoon were led out of danger, on one occasion, by a taniwha which appeared as a small cloud of smoke. He was a very practical and hard headed man, and a great friend of mine and I believe him. Princess Te Puea told me that, as a girl, she had seen taniwha in the Waikato and had also seen fairies. Riki Kereopa, of Cape Colville; Kapa Potae of Kennedy Bay,