ing, this was considered an ill omen. Should it happen to choose any part of the house as a perch and was seen, this would set tongues wagging in the most depressive manner, for in Maori folklore, ruru the messenger of evil, was also the carrier of death. It meant that someone close within the family circle was very ill, or someone close to all had died. Great emphasis was placed upon dreams, and was not the Holy Book full of stories about God's chosen ones having dreams as signs and warnings, to prove it? There were plenty of kaumatua and kuia adept at figuring out the meaning. A wedding was interpreted as a funeral, and to dream of a tupapaku (a corpse), meant wedding bells. To dream of catching a monstrous eel, if ill, was a bad sign, though to dream of loved ones who had journeyed into the land of the Great Unknown, particularly if one remembered the conversation, was a good thing. For a rooster, who for some reason happened to be startled into wakefulness and felt like crowing (perhaps he too was having a nightmare) to ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ before midnight or just after, meant an accident or serious trouble. When a house, or a church, or a meeting house was being built, no woman was permitted to enter it until the tapu was lifted and it had been blessed by the elders. It was considered bad taste for a woman to walk across a field or sports area prior to any games or events. If meat was hung under the trees and left hanging at night, great care was taken to see that the moonbeams did not touch it. Many of the people held great fears about the kakariki (gecko). To come across one basking in the sun, especially if it was looking directly at a person, face to face, was enough to make grown men run in fear. At night, we would huddle under our

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blankets talking about these signs and their meanings, and if by chance some startled puriri moth or night-flying insect would bang against the window-panes, or a cricket should jump through the open window and break into its high-pitched morse-like serenade, there would be a mad rush to pile into one bed, secure in the mistaken belief of security in numbers. I learnt many fascinating things, and each year, I used to count the months till the Christmas holidays would come, and I would set out on my all-day journey to the back-blocks. I once heard my father saying to my mother that I was becoming a proper little devil; and ‘all you can get out of him is eels, rotten corn, Maori bread, horses, bullocks, bang bang pictures, huis, all this mumbo-jumbo in Maori, like a real little savage’; and he thought it best that I should pay more attention to going to Mass and in seeing the sisters taught me my catechism; was he doing the right thing in letting me spend too much time with the folks in the country?; I was acquiring all sorts of bad habits (I had told the neighbours how to plant water-melon at night, that we ate huhu bugs and sea-urchins, kina). Believe me, there was an awful lot of head shaking and of making the sign of the cross, and whispered utterances of ‘Father have mercy on us’, and ‘Mother of God save us’ from shocked mothers. One of the parents wrote a note to the sisters, and one of them took me to the convent chapel to kneel and say extra prayers. But I knew my mother, and that year I went as usual to the country. That was the year of the Spanish civil war, and each day we were told at school about the atrocities against the church in the name of war. I was so filled with sorrow for these victims, that I told the sisters and my parents that I was going to be a priest when I grew up, and everyone was pleased to think I'd be saving souls. But fate had other things in store for me, and not even the priests could save me. Back in the back-blocks I completely forgot about the civil war in Spain, about Mass, and about abstaining from eating meat on Fridays or feast days. Heathen or not we ate well and lived well. Besides, here, ruru and other dark mysterious omens ruled the roost. Grand-uncle Wiremu introduced me to the healing qualities and medi-