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Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori

The Man Whose Thoughts Were Wings

The Man Whose Thoughts Were Wings

“Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
I like him not; such men are dangerous.”

Those were the lines that went through my mind as I observed one of Wairehu's visitors, a restless-eyed gaunt fellow, by repute a tohunga and bush medicine-man; the kind of man who made new cults and fanatic religions. He followed Wairehu in the story-telling, and in a curious half-chanting voice he told of the wizardly powers of an ancestor on his mother's side. That warlock forefather of his lived far away down on the West Coast, on the Waitotara River. In the valley of this river there were several great forts, built on high hills, separated by deep swamps and bends of the stream. The wizard of the Waitotara, however, had no difficulty in passing from hill-village to village of his tribe, for he flew through the air. His name was Tama-ahua-rere-rangi, which means “The page 22 Man Who Flies Across the Heavens.” He did not possess wings; no, he projected himself through the air by the impulse of his amazing mana, his innate magic influence. A thought was to him as wings; he had first but to resolve that he would fly to such and such a place and invoke his gods, and lo! he was there. But alas! suddenly he lost his gift. His powers of flight deserted him, all in the space between dusk-time and daylight, and he that had been as a god now had to trudge the earth like a common mortal when he travelled from village to village.

“How did he lose that strange power?” asked one of the young women around the glowing brazier.

“My girl,” said the saturnine one, “it was all through you women that he became flightless like the kiwi. He married him a wife one night, and in the morning he that had been a god in himself was but an ordinary man of the earth. His thoughts were wings no longer. That is why my ancestor Tama lost his magical powers. The thought comes to me, we men would all be gods if we had no women to despoil us of our strength. For myself, I despise all women. Would that my ancestor had page 23 done the same! I might now be a greater wonder than the pakeha airmen who cross lands and seas in their flying ships—for I would need no ship.”

E tama!” exclaimed Wairehu. “If your ancestor had been like you, my son, where would you have been? Now answer me that!”

“Pah!” said Ripeka of the coppery hair, with a gesture of her pipe towards the misanthropic Cassius. “His talk is all rupahu—the boast and brag that hide a disappointment in love. For was it not he who but three days ago besought my sister, the widow, in Tokaanu for a share of her sleeping-mat—which she refused him, having a pleasanter husband in view!”

And the laugh was against Cassius that time.