Rupe assumed the form of a bird and flew down to this world in which he had found his sister. He chanted as he came down—
"It is Rupe, yes Rupe,
The elder brother;
And I am here."
He folded the mother and her boy under his wings and flew away with them. Sir George Gray relates a legend in which Maui-mua or Rupe is recorded as having carried his sister and her child to one of the new lands, found in his long voyage, where dwelt an aged relative, of chief rank, with his retainers.
Some legends say that Tini-rau tried to catch Rupe, who was compelled to drop the child in order to escape with the mother. Tini-rau caught the child and carefully cared for him until he grew to be a strong young lad.
Then he wanted to find his mother and bring her back to his father. How this was done, how Rupe took his sister back to the old chief, and how civil wars arose are not all these told in the legends of the Maoris. Thus the tricks of Maui the mischievous brought trouble for a time, but were finally overshadowed by happy homes in neighboring lands for his suffering sister and her descendants.
IX.
MAUI'S KITE FLYING.
Maui the demi-god was sometimes the Hercules of Polynesia. His exploits were fully as marvelous as those of the hero of classic mythology. He snared the sun. He pulled up islands from the ocean depths. He lifted the sky into its present position and smoothed its arched surface with his stone adze. These stories belong to all Polynesia.
There are numerous less important local myths, some of them peculiar to New Zealand, some to the Society Islands and some to the Hawaiian group.