‘Oh, friends, I greet you! Hearken to my words. Smear the sacred paint of kokowai all over your bodies, and paint the inside of your house and the door-posts and the door and threshold also with the kokowai, for the Patu-paiarehe fear the kokowai as they do the fire of man. And, when the fairies come and see that you have covered everything over with kokowai, they will be afraid to enter into your house at night to steal the woman.’
So in the morning Ruarangi and his wife went forth and gathered kokowai earth (the sacred red ochre of the Maoris), and, mixing it, painted the whole of the inside of the house and the lintel-posts and the door, and also painted their bodies with it, and as evening came on they lit a fire in the house and awaited the coming of the fairy.
And at night, in the black darkness, there came to the house of Ruarangi the fairy chief from the misty mountain-top. He stood in the marae outside the door, and, as he looked into the house and saw the red kokowai on the posts and walls and on the bodies of the man and woman who sat by the fire repeating incantations, he grew afraid, and remained outside in the courtyard. He raised his voice in a song of lamentation, for he loved Tawhaiatu, but he could not prevail against the sacred kokowai and the powerful spells of Ruarangi. And then the fairy returned sorrowing to his dwelling on lofty Pirongia.”
“And,” said the pakeha, “Ruarangi and his wife lived happily together for the rest of their days.”
“Ae ra” (“Yes,”) gravely returned the Maori. “And who should know if not I? For Ruarangi and Tawhaiatu were my own ancestors. And perhaps I am half a Patu-paiarehe myself. Who can tell?”
