Te Tohunga/Nga Patu-Paiarehe, the Children of the Mist
XIV
THE PATU-PAIAREHE: THE FAIRY PEOPLE OF THE MOUNTAINS
ar up in the misty mountains dwell the Patu-paiarehe, the fairies of Maori Land. They are seldom seen; and, indeed, most mortals who have no gift of imagination and no mana-tapu cannot expect to behold the good people; and many who know no better deny their existence.
It is supposed by some that they were really tribes of aborigines whom the Maoris found dwelling in this wild new land when they arrived here from the isles of Polynesia. But the old Maoris say that they still inhabit certain of the lofty forest-clad mountains of Aotearoa—a numerous people, some of them tiny gnomes and elves and pixies, some of them in the presentment of men and women of this world but smaller and exquisitely-shaped and with fair hair and fair skins just like Europeans. They are known to the Maoris by several names: Turehu, Tahurangi, Maero, and Patu-paiarehe; but their common designation is Patu-paiarehe. They are a bright, cheerful race, and take great pleasure in music. They are skilled in charms and the art of enchantment, and many a strange adventure has happened to the Maori who has had the temerity to venture into their haunts.
Like the elves of other countries, these fairies of Maori Land dread daylight, and appear only by night. Sometimes, on dark and gloomy days, when the thick mists descend and envelop the bare crags and deep ravines of the mountains of the South, the fairy people will be heard chanting songs in a thin sweet cadence, and then too will be heard the doleful sound of the fairy trumpet, and the faint and plaintive music of the Koauau, or nose-flute, and the voices of the fairy children laughing and singing above the clouds. But most of all they love the thickly-wooded mountains of the North, the Fish of Maui, where they live in their little pas, palisaded like those of the Maoris, and adorned with quaint little carvings and diminutive figures of fairy ancestors. Few mortals can discover those pas. They are hidden far away in the shadiest recesses of the bush, where the mist-maidens hover all day long, and where the Goddess of the Clouds descends nightly and covers her fairy children with her loving mantle. A Tohunga alone can perceive those stockades and houses of the Patu-paiarehe. To ordinary folk who penetrate the fairy country, those works of the little people are to all appearance mere trees and rocks and beds of ferns. But, if you have the wise eye and the Tohunga’s understanding, you will see that the great rimu pine, with its drooping waterfall of golden foliage, and the lance-like kahikatea, tall and stately, the knotted and gnarled rata, the graceful nikau palm, and the lovely tree-fern, swishing gently its broad feather-fronds, are all part and portion of the Patu-paiarehe dwellings. For the fairies are ever of the forests: with the forest-trees they live, and with the passing of the forests they, too, pass away.
Many are the stories told of the fairy people and their encounters with mortals. One story says that it was from a party of fairies who were fishing by night for mackerel (tawatawa) in a bay in the far North, where they were joined by adventurous Maoris, and who, being surprised by daylight, fled, leaving their nets on the beach, that the Maori people first learned the pattern and hitch used in making the large seine fishing-nets.
Harmless as the Patu-paiarehe ordinarily were, they yet could worry mortals considerably on occasion. Some hapus of fairies, for instance, were in the habit of making periodical nocturnal expeditions to the homes of the Maoris and carrying off their wives. The korako, or albinos, sometimes seen amongst the Maoris are said to be the offspring of these unions; though in the far North they are spoken of as the children of kehua (ghostly visitants) and the women of this world. One of these stories of wife-abduction by the fairies relates to Mt Pirongia.
This beautiful mountain, with its dense woody ridges and valleys, its cascading brooks and its rocky fastnesses, is in Maori eyes the abode of hosts of Patu-paiarehe. In the dark moonless nights the lone eel-fisher out on the Waipa banks would start in affright when on his imaginative ear broke the sound of the fairies singing in their pas, and he would promptly fortify himself against their magic wiles by reciting potent karakia or incantations, and would chant a high quavering waiata to scare away the goblins of the night.
One day long ago Te Puhi and I were out pigeon-shooting far up the wooded slopes of Mt Pirongia. Evening bad come upon us while we were intent upon bagging the “wing-flapping children of Tane”, and, as we had a long and toilsome journey down the bush ridges and across rapid creeks to make before we reached the old frontier township of Alexandra, my Maori companion and I decided upon spending the night in the forest. So, selecting a comfortable nook beneath the spreading branches of a fine old rata tree, we were soon enjoying a savoury meal of fat pigeons roasted over the camping fire, with the turnip-like pith of the nikau palm in lieu of bread. Tama-nui-te-Ra sank down beyond the westernmost peak into his ocean cave. The evening mists crept up from the murmuring streams and the gloomy gullies, and stole noiselessly along the dark forest ranges; and the Hau-ma-ringiringi, the soft fog-born dews, descended on the earth. And there was something uncanny in the long dancing gleams of light which shot through the forest from our bivouac fire. The black shadows of the woodland swayed like ghosts with the flickering of the flames; and, Puhi, squatting close by the fire, gazed half fearfully down the gloomy forest aisles. And presently, in subdued tones, as if he were chary of arousing the genii of the bush by too loud a tongue, he told the story of the fairies.
“O friend of mine, listen! This is the belief of our people. This peak of Pirongia is an enchanted mountain; and it is well that you, a pakeha, are with me, else would I perchance be visited by the fairy tribe who dwell upon these heights. Pirongia is a Maunga-hikonga-uira, that is a ‘lightning-flashing peak’. Sometimes, when it is fine weather below on the plains, thunder will be heard rolling along the summit, and the lightning will be seen darting downwards upon its topmost peak. That is a tohu maté, an omen of death or misfortune to the Maoris: some chief of our tribe will die, or some untoward event will overtake the people. And high up around the top of the mountain live the Patu-paiarehe.
A great many years ago, many generations before the pakeha came to these shores and when the plains below us here were covered with the fires of the Maoris, there lived at the foot of this mountain, near the Waipa River, a chief named Ruarangi, of the tribe to which I too belong. His wife was named Tawhaiatu, and she was a woman of fine appearance, a beautiful woman in the eyes of the Maori. And the fairies of the mountain also considered her a fine wahine, for one morning when Ruarangi returned to his house in the early dawn, after having been out all night eel-fishing, he found that his wife had disappeared. He searched long for her, and called her name aloud, but to no avail. When full daylight came, Ruarangi, greatly sorrowing, took his spear in his hand and placed his stone weapon in his belt and went along the track in the direction of the mountain where the fairies dwelt, for he knew that his wife had been carried off by a Patu-paiarehe. And, as he paused awhile on his way, be stretched forth his spear towards the fairy-mountain and wept, and chanted his song of lamentation for his vanished wife:
‘My message of love blows afar,
Borne on the Eastern breeze,
A token of sorrow from the
Beloved one of your dreams.
Here stand I, in whose fond arms
You oft reposed. Oh, loved one of my
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:
‘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?”
