Half-Caste Maori Girls
Sitting on the grass, with her chin on her knees and her romantic eyes staring straight in front of her, Mochau started to chant to herself. “Come on, Mochau,” I said, “tell me some more fairy tales.” She laughed, then grew very earnest, for she always imagined she was the heroine of the tales she told. Then, facing me and looking into my eyes, she began:
“Long, long ago out of the sea rose the head of a beautiful youth, Takaroa. His eyes were two stars, which he had stolen one night out of the sky. Running up the shore, he looked on the land and clapped his hands with delight to see the beautiful trees and all horahia te marino” (so peaceful); “and as he stood looking, the water dripping from his body in the golden sunlight, he said: ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ Then all the warri flowers on the big trees suddenly heard and looked down, for they had turned into the faces of beautiful girls, and they opened their mouths and cried together: ‘I am she! I am she!’ Then the beautiful youth of the sea looked up at them closely with his wide-open eyes, and said: ‘You are not beautiful enough, not any of you; she whom I love has eyes made out of the sunsets, and the stars all shine in the dark night of her hair; so go away, go away.’ And all these beautiful girls cried bitterly, and shrank up and were only flowers again. Then the boy from the sea, Takaroa, shouted once more: ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ and all the caverns along the shores and the mountains echoed back sadly to him: ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ Then Takaroa lay on the shore in the deep grass and cried to himself and fell asleep.
“In the morning, when the great sunrise was shining over the sea, and all the mountains inland were on fire with golden light, he was awake, and, jumping up, he lifted his hands to the sky. ‘O god of the sky, where is she? Where is she?’ And at once a little hihi bird came flying across the forest sky and, sitting on the pohutukawa tree just above the beautiful youth, started to sing sweetly on its twig. Takaroa listened, and looked up and said: ‘Are you my love?’ And the little bird started at once to swell, its feathers all puffed out, and it grew and grew; then lo! out jumped a beautiful girl!
“Oh, so lovely she was,” said Mochau, as she stopped and looked at her imaged face in the moonlit lake; for, as I told you, she always would believe that she was the beautiful heroine; then she continued: “Her hair was like the tangled forest with the stars shining in it, and her eyes more beautiful than the sunset. ‘Oh, oh, you are my love, you are my love; sing to me, sing to me,’ the immortal youth said; and side by side they sang together. Then he plucked a bamboo cane and made a magic flute, and she sang and danced. ‘Oh, how beautiful you are,’ he said as he looked upon her lovely body. And she said: ‘Do you love me, Takaroa, or my body?’ And he said: ‘Oh, Tamo mi Werie, I love you, not your body, but your beautiful eyelight.’ Then all day they danced and sang together.
“Then night came, and he made a lovely soft bed for her, and she lay down on the grey moss and curled up her warm limbs. The beautiful youth lay down beside her and kissed her red coral lips and said: ‘Oh, my love, place your arms round me.’ And she said: ‘I dare not, oh, I dare not.’ But still he pleaded, and he was as beautiful as was his voice, so she relented and put her arms out and sighed; and he clasped—a little bird! Oh! how he cried, and cried, for in the grey moss was still the impression of the beautiful girl’s body; and though the little bird had flown away, he still kept looking down at the grey moss bed and crying out: ‘Oh, come back to me.’ But the little bird came not back, and he was alone with the silent night; and all around him the old giant trees, with gnarled trunks, sighed and moaned in the moonlight with deep, windy voices as the wind blew through them; for they were the stalwart warriors, the long dead tattooed chiefs who had once lived in the world of love and grief.”
Then Mochau looked once more into the lake water at herself, and the tears were in her eyes; and the old tattooed chief’s eyes blinked in the moonlight as we sat together and looked at each other. I cannot show you the surrounding forest and the deep stillness of the waters, or paint the moon that shone over the lake, or Mochau the Maori girl’s romantic eyes and face.
Presently Mochau looked up into her father’s face and said, “Parro, tell us a tale also”; and immediately the old chief, who longed to outrival his daughter, for the Maoris seem to live chiefly that they may dream of far-off battles and tell weird legends, began and told me how this world got into our Universe.
“Before the very beginning of things a mighty god was walking across the clouds in the sky. He had not slept for thousands and thousands of years. So he put his giant feet against some stars that twinkled between his toes and, with his head pillowed on the roaming cloud, sat and rested; and his shadow moved across the sky like a mountain-man wherever the cloud moved along, and obscured the fixed stars in its passage. On and on he went for thousands of years, resting, which to the mighty god was only like a tiny rest of one minute. Then he suddenly said: ‘Oh, I do feel tired’; and as he slowly rose to his feet and obscured all the Milky Way he yawned, and lo! out of his mouth, to the mighty god’s own surprise, jumped thousands of tiny boys and girls. Round and round the god they swam in space, with gleaming eyes and laughing voices; and then, suddenly growing tired, they too cried: ‘We are tired, give us something to sit upon.’ The old god sighed, and on his breath came all the stars of the lower firmament; and he shed tears at the thought that he had become sleepy and yawned, and made boys and girls come, and those tears made the great seas beneath him! Then, as the children cried again, the great earth heaved up silently under him also, and he threw the moon into the sky. Still the children cried out: ‘Oh, we are so cold!’ So he tore out one of his eyes and threw it into the sky, and lo! the great sun shone and warmed them! Then they said: ‘Oh, dear god, we are hungry.’ And the god sighed again and touched a fleecy cloud, and out jumped thousands of woolly sheep; and from his new clouds of moonlight he plucked bunches of glittering wings; and birds soared, singing across the new sky. Still they cried: ‘Oh, dear god, we want something else, and then something else.’ And the great god became terribly fierce and shouted the thunder; then the rain fell! Still the children were unsatisfied, and the god said: ‘All right, you shall grow old and ugly’; and when they understood what that meant they cried loudly to the god for forgiveness. So he relented and said: ‘Though you must grow old and ugly, you shall have little children to take your place.’ And they clapped their hands for joy. But still they were unsatisfied; and he got fierce again and said: ‘You shall fall asleep, and your bodies turn to flowers, and trees, and dust.’ And then at last they felt a little more satisfied; because, when they found that they had to leave the beautiful world for ever, the stars, the flowers, the trees, the ocean and the sunsets became sad and seemed more beautiful to look upon: and so the first old Maori men and women got very ugly and crept into the earth to die quite satisfied!” Thus finishing, the old chief licked his dry lips and sang me a chant, as he lived on in some past age; and Mochau looked at him tenderly and sang softly with him. They looked like two children together, and not father and daughter at all. They lived in a dreamland and cared for nothing else, for they lived within themselves.