OKAHUMOKO BAY, WHANGAROA
For myself, I could not have the heart to apply scientific analysis to our Maori fairy-tales, all too brief and scanty as they are. It is, doubtless, interesting to speculate on the possible connections of these with the existence of shadowy tribes who may have inhabited parts of New Zealand in the distant centuries, and been driven into inaccessible mountains and entangled woods by the Maori invader. To me, however, the legends seem to indicate a belief, not in one supernatural race, but in several. In Europe, of course, the Northern traditions described beings of every sort of shape, from giants and two-headed ogres to minute elves almost too small to be seen. And in the same continent, under clearer skies, were the classic myths of nymphs and woodland deities, human in shape, but of a beauty exceeding that of mankind. So Keats could dream of enchanting things that happened
Upon a time before the faëry broods
Drove nymph and satyr from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,
Sceptre and mantle clasped with dewy gem,
Frightened away the dryads and the fauns
From rushes green and brakes and cowslipp’d lawns.
In much the same way do the Maori stories vary. One tells us of giant hunters attended by two-headed dogs. Another seems to indicate a tiny race of wood elves or goblins. Elsewhere the Maori story-teller explains that fairies were much like human beings, but white-skinned, and with red or yellow hair, nearly resembling the Pakeha. They haunted the sea-shore and the recesses of the hill-forests, whither they would decoy the incautious Maori by their singing. The sound of their cheerful songs was sweet and clear, and in the night-time the traveller would hear their voices among the trees, now on this side, now on that; or the notes would seem to rise near at hand, and then recede and fall, dying away on the distant hill-sides. Their women were beautiful, and more than one Maori ancestral chief possessed himself of a fairy wife. On the other hand, the fairies would carry off the women and maidens of the Maori, or even, sometimes, little children, who were never seen again, though their voices were heard by sorrowing mothers calling in the air over the tree-tops.
