The Legend of the Wailing Woman.
By D. W. O. Fagan, of Mangapai, Whangarei, Auckland, New Zealand.
The author writes: "In a cave under the cliffs of Manaia is a 'blow-hole' only actuated once in every month, at the time of the highest spring tides, when it sends forth a wailing shriek. Below I have set down the native legend concerning it, as told to me by my old Maori friend Puketawa. Allowing for idiomatic differences, the narrative is in his own words."
We beached our boat on the shore of the islet and waited the coming of the flood-tide to help us against the river current in the harbour narrows. Night had already fallen, but the sands were still warm from the heat of the sun, and though the sky was clear and full of stars, the shadows were very dark under the Pohotokawas, where we lay. Our fire had sunk to a few dull embers, and Puketawa's pipe glowed like a red eye from the darkness. Across the channel opposite, a quarter of a mile away, rose the dark mass of Manaia, its crags among the stars. Presently, the moon, rising from the sea behind us, lit the dark rocks with a flood of silver light.
On three sides of the headland cliffs rose sheer from the water to a height of two hundred feet. On the flat, table-like top a cone-shaped mass of limestone rocks, piled one above the other, rose to a further height of a hundred feet or so. The cliff of the seaward face was pierced at its base by a dark cave, into which the swell broke with gurgling echoes. On the fourth side the ground fell away in a grassy slope from the base of the rock-cone to the white sands of the bay.
At the top of the slope were the mound and ditch of an old "pah" (fort). Whence I wonder did those old-time Maoris obtain their knowledge of military fortification? Vallum and fosse, scarp and counter-scarp, the place looked like a Roman "castrum." It needed no great stretch of fancy to imagine the glint of moonbeams on brazen armour, the clang of shields and steady tramp of the legionaries on the ramparts.
I glanced at Puketawa, and saw by the sheen of his eyes through the shadows and the fierce short puffs at his pipe that his mind was back in the old legendary days, when these same cliffs rang to the clash of weapons, the fierce shouts of contending warriors, and the dying screams of the vanquished.
As the tide rose and a heavier swell rolled into the cave, there came from its dark mouth a long, sobbing cry—half wail, half shriek—the anguished cry of a woman in distress.