Heart! Return!
My head is bowed with grief.
Return! Incline to me your face;
Like rushing fountains see my tears down fall.’
And lying in wait for two days near the forest pa, Ruarangi performed the ceremonies and repeated the incantations to recover his ravished wife. By stratagem he gained the place where she had been taken to by the fairy—the Patu-paiarehe did not perceive him, else had he been a dead man; and in haste he took her, before her fairy husband could follow in pursuit, and they reached their village on the banks of the Waipa in safety.
But Ruarangi and his wife knew that, though they were back in their home, the fairy chief or his followers would come by night and endeavour to regain possession of her. Their hearts sank as they communed long with one another in the shelter of their raupo house and planned how to prevent the fairies from again carrying Tawhaiatu away. And at night there came the spirit of one of their priestly ancestors, and it sat on the ridge-pole of their house and the thin whistling voice of the wairua spoke down to them as they sat by the fire in the centre of the whare:
THE MAORIS AND THE FAIRY PEOPLE