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Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori

Chapter XI

page 119

Chapter XI

The Story of Hatupatu and Kura-of-the-Claws

… . mighty trees
In many a lazy syllable repeating
Their old poetic legends to the winds.

Look you there on yon green hillside of Mokoia Island above the village of the kumara growers; the woody hillside where the tui's voice is heard in the evergreen groves. There stands, on a little hillock, a beautiful wide-branched totara tree. It looks as if it had been planted there, it stands so dignified and apart; it looks, too, as if it were guarding the little house just below it in which the Maoris keep the sacred stone image Matua-tonga. This totara tree is called “Te Paré-a-Hatupatu,” which means “Hatupatu's Head-wreath.” It sprang, says legend, from a twig in a head-chaplet of green leaves worn by Hatupatu, who performed many marvellous feats of old, five centuries ago. And there is another head-chaplet tree here. A little to the south of the lone totara tree, above the landing page 120 place on the Paepaerau beach, there is a Druidic-looking grove of thickly-foliaged karaka and wharangi trees. In the middle of the grove is a large tawa tree with a fine spreading head. There is a hollow in the tree-butt near the ground; this, say the Maoris, was formerly an iringa-koiwi, that is to say, a receptacle for the bones of the dead. This tree, like the totara, is known as “Te Paré-a-Hatupatu;” it also sprang, says the legend, from one of the chief's brow-wreaths. A mystic grove this, with its air of pagan sanctity. None but tohungas might enter its shade in the old days; and not a Maori will approach the spirit-haunted tawa now.

The story of Hatupatu, as I heard it one day of long ago, from the venerable man Tamati Hapimana, when we sat at the foot of the totara tree—it is not under the ban of tapu like the tawa grove—is one of those curious folk-tales in which fact and fiction are hopelessly intertwined in characteristic Polynesian fashion.

Hatupatu was a youth who came to these shores in the Arawa canoe from the Maori South Sea fatherland. With his elder brothers, Ha-nui, and Ha-roa, he went page 121 inland bird-hunting, in the great green forests of the high lands in this strange new country. He scoured the bush, spearing and snaring the pretty koko (the tui or parson-bird), the noisy kaka (parrot), and the soft-cooing kuku (the wood-pigeon)—what beautiful onomatopoetic names the primitive Maori gave to the forest-birds! In the depths of the woods near the Waikato River he was caught by a frightful female ogre, a harpy whose name was Kura-ngaituku,—“Kura-of-the-Claws”—who was feathered like a bird, and armed with very long sharp talons, with which she speared her prey in the bush. (You may see her presentment carved on the doors of some Maori communal halls in the Rotorua country; half-woman, half-bird, with little birds nestling in her hair or flying about her.) Hatupatu was borne off by the feathered giantess to her gloomy home, which was a cave near the top of a rocky mountain above the Waikato River. There the witch lived, and there she had a kind of aviary of tame birds; and in and out of crevices in the rocky walls of the cave played little lizards, each of which had a name given it by Kura-of-the-Claws. There she set her latest captive, page 122 Hatupatu, bidding him mind the birds while she was out a-hunting, spearing birds with her terrible talons.

Hatupatu awaited an opportunity to escape, and one day when Kura-of-the-Claws was out in search of food he fled from the cave-dwelling, after liberating all the birds. And one of these birds the riroriro—the little grey warbler—flew off in search of its mistress, crying and chirruping as it went, “O Kura', O Kura', Hatupatu has gone!” And the witch-giantess came back to her cave and seeing that Hatupatu had let her pet birds go free and had, moreover, killed all the pet lizards he could find, she set out in furious anger to recapture the fugitive. From hill to hill she went on Hatu's trail, half-leaping, half-flying, her fierce eagle-eyes darting this way and that for Hatupatu. The Arawa youth, fortifying himself with powerful incantations—taught him by his elders, and chief of all by Ngatoro-i-rangi the great tohunga—swiftly crossed mountains and valleys and streams, but the infuriated Kura' took whole hills at a stride. She was close on Hatupatu's heels when in his desperation as he came to a great rock, a round boulder lying at the foot of a page 123 ferny hill, he repeated the most potent charm of all. It was just two words:

Matiti, Matata!”

At this Maori “Open, Sesame” the huge rock straightway split open, revealing a hollow in its heart. Hatupatu leaped in and the rock closed after him. Kura' was just a moment too late. She tore savagely at the boulder with her fearful claws but Hatu' was safe.*

The witch woman tarried long in the woods above, waiting for Hatupatu to emerge from his rock shelter. At last he did so, and fled northward over the plains and hills toward Rotorua Lake, with Kura again in hot chase. The race went on until the pair came to the Pareuru Pass, a narrow ferny valley between the square-topped hill Owhinau and the steep slants of Moerangi page 124 Mountain. There, if you go along the Forest Service track between Whakarewarewa and Roto-kakahi, you will see masses of boulders, volcanic rocks fallen from the hills above, scattered about the valley. One of these, alongside the road, is curiously marked with deep striae like the grooves worn in glacier moraine rocks in the Alpine country. Those scratches are the marks of Kura-ngaituku's talons as she tore ferociously at Hatupatu, when he leaped behind the rock for safety. Just by a hand's-breadth did he avoid those spearing claws.

The rock refuge gave Hatupatu a moment's breathing space, then on he fled again, down the Waipa Valley for Whakarewarewa. There in the open ground Kura' once more all but seized the flying Hatupatu. Just at the foot of Pohaturoa hill, which makes a green background for the steam clouds from the geysers and hot springs of Whakarewarewa, the young man, as he dashed down the valley, came to a great boiling pool of white churning mud. This was the sulphur-belching pool called Whanga-pipiro. He leaped across it safely and went racing on. But Kura-Ngaituku, flying after him, page 125 did not see the mud-spring until too late. She attempted to leap it but dropped plop! into the horrible pool. Down she sank; the boiling, heaving porridge-like white mud closed over her fierce feathered head, and that was the last of Kura-of-the-Claws.

The rejoicing Hatu', thus ridden of his terrible witch of the forest, went on his way to the lake. On the shore of Rotorua, near the place which we now call Sulphur Point, he rested and decked his head with a chaplet of green leaves, then, plunging into the lake, he turned his face toward the island of Mokoia, where his parents lived. He dived, and swam under water to the island. Halfway across, or rather through the lake, he paused to eat a meal of kakahi, the fresh-water bivalve; then he swam on again. The spot where he halted for his watery feast is known to this day as “Te Mauri-ohorere-a-Hatupatu.” (“The startled soul of Hatupatu.”) It is a long white rock on the bottom of the lake, between Ohinemutu and Mokoia. A mortal cannot look on that magic rock with impunity; to see it is a tohu-maté, a portent of approaching death. Should a canoe crew be paddling over that spot, and the paddlers, incautiously looking page 126 down through the clean shallow water, behold that enchanted sacred Mauri then they or some of their kindred will surely shortly die.

Hatupatu leaped gladly upon the shore of Mokoia Island, home from his great adventures, and as he landed he threw down his wet head-chaplet of foliage. The branchlets took root and grew and they became those pohutukawa trees which grow so grandly on the shore of the sacred island. And in his later adventures, when he followed the war-path and performed many marvellous deeds, he twined his head for the home-coming with green leaves, which grew into trees, such as that tawa yonder in the haunted grove. And noblest of all is the totara which sprang from a sprig that he wore returning from a war expedition over the forest ranges beyond the Rotoiti-Rotoma chain of lakes. A score of generations has passed since Hatupatu the wonder-worker set that tender tree there, to adorn the hillside of beautiful Mokoia, and to-day when the soft hau-matangi, the sweet breeze from the north, stirs its tall head of fadeless green, it whispers the magic-meaning name of Hatupatu.

page 127

Notes

These Maori legends of human beings carried off by strange creatures of the forest suggest a far-away birthplace. Sir Hugh Clifford, in his tales of the Malay Peninsula, tells a singular story, as related by the Dyaks, or a man who was captured by a female mais, or orangutan, and borne off by her to her home in the tree-tops, as a mate. The Elopement of Chaling the Dyak has more than one feature in common with the tale of Hatupatu, and the tradition of Kura-ngaituku may have been a folk-memory traceable back to the jungles of Indonesia.

Kura-ngaituku's Rock, as it is called, is to be seen to this day, on the right-hand or south side of the track to Roto-kakahi through the Pareuru valley. It is a great flat-topped rock of dark-grey rhyolite, half-buried in the fern; its upper surface, lichen-grown is marked with a series of fissures or cuts, as described. Like the enchanted rock at the foot of Ngatuku Hill, on the Waikato River, this huge stone was an uruuru-whenua, and the Maoris on passing it were accustomed to lay offerings of fern and leaves on it, in obeisance to the spirit or genius loci.

A similar ceremony was performed at the sacred boiling mud pool Whanga_pipiro, in which Kura-ngaituku perished. The ancient track from Rotorua up the Waipa valley passed the puia, and offerings were made here by travellers to placate the spirit of the place. The wayfarer dropped a branch of fern, manuka, or raurekau into the steaming cauldron, repeating the short charm, “Mau e kai te manawa o tauhou,” a karakia meaning “O spirit of the earth, feed thou on the heart of the stranger.” If this rite were omitted, say the Maoris, a storm of rain would shortly descend, and punish the wayfarer for his neglect.

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Kura-of-the-Claws. A Maori carving-artist's conception. (The door of a carved house at Rotorua)

Kura-of-the-Claws. A Maori carving-artist's conception. (The door of a carved house at Rotorua)

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Mita Taupopoki (the narrator of “The Dragon of the Sacred Lake.”)

Mita Taupopoki (the narrator of “The Dragon of the Sacred Lake.”)

* This refuge-place of Hatupatu's, in local folk-lore, is a large peculiarly shaped rhyolite rock, hollowed out on one side as by human agency, which stands by the roadside at the foot of Ngatuku Hill; the rock is seen on the left as one goes along the old road from Rotorua to Taupo just before the Waikato River bridge is reached at Atiamuri. The hollow interior of the stone, the side facing the hill, is somewhat like an arm-chair seat. Maori travellers to this day lay offering of manuka twigs or fern in the cavity of the rock, in propitiation of the ancient genius loci. This practice is supposed to avert rain-storms and other hindrances on one's journey.