THE FAIRIES OF THE MAORIES.
The fairies of New Zealand are described as a very numerous people, merry, and always singing like crickets. In appearance they are quite different from the Maories, the natives of New Zealand; they rather resemble Europeans, their hair and complexion being remarkably fair.
One day, when Te Kanawa, a chief of one of the Maori tribes, happened to fall in with a troop of fairies on a hill in the Waikato district, he heard them distinctly singing some mysterious verses, which he afterwards repeated to his friends, and which are still preserved in the poetry of the New Zealanders.
Te Kanawa had died before any Europeans arrived in New Zealand, but the details of his encounter with the fairies are not forgotten by the people. They say that he had gone out with his dogs to catch Kiwis,[64] when night came on and he found himself right at the top of Pukemore, a high hill. There it was where the fairies approached the brave chief, and frightened him almost to death. He lighted a fire, and therewith scared them a little. Whenever the fire blazed up brightly, off went the fairies and hid themselves, peeping out from behind stumps of trees; and when it burnt low, back they came close to it, merrily singing and dancing.
The sudden thought struck the trembling chief that he might perhaps induce the fairies to go away if he gave them the jewels he had about him; so he took off a beautiful little figure carved in green jasper, which he wore as a neck ornament; then he pulled out his jasper ear-drop finely carved, and also his earring made of the tooth of a tiger-shark. Fearing lest the fairies should touch him, he took a stick, and, fixing it into the ground, hung the precious presents upon it. Directly after the fairies had ended their song they examined the trinkets; and they took the shadow from them, which they handed about from one to another through the whole party. Suddenly they all vanished carrying with them the shadows of the jewels, but leaving behind the jewels themselves.
The verses which Te Kanawa heard the fairies sing are, as has been already said, still known, and the Maories cite them in proof that everything happened to their brave chief, Te Kanawa, as it is related.[65]