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Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori

Chapter VI — Tokahaere, the Walking Rock

page 73

Chapter VI
Tokahaere, the Walking Rock

“There is a wonderful rock over yonder,” said one of my Ngati-Raukawa friends, as we rode on across the fern country southeast of Orakau, on our way to the headquarters village of his tribe at Aote-aroa, a far-back King Country settlement. The Maori pointed ahead to a valley which rifted the plateau stretching away before us to the thunderous blue mass of Wharepuhunga Mountain. “Yonder is the place of the tipua rock which we call Tokahaere—the Rock that Walked. It rests there now, watching all who go by, and it is well to appease the spirit that dwells in it, for it is an enchanted thing and of strange and ancient mana.”

Our road, intersecting here the old Maori track, came all at once to the edge of a boldly-scarped cliff, curving round in a great cirque of dark-grey rhyolite rock, which in places is scooped out in shallow caves. Just in the elbow of the valley, the Manga-komua, and close to the summit page 74 where we pulled up, there lifted from a ferny cushion of a mound a huge monumental rock, shaped not unlike a gigantic tooth, its surface almost bare except for the tufts of manuka on its very top, and chiselled and fashioned by the fires of long ago and the play of ages of weather. It was about 80 feet in height, a monolith in rhyolite, reminding one of the great rock pillar which the Maoris call Hinemoa, at the foot of Horohoro Mountain. The fern furred its foot; on its lightning-shattered pinnacle, where the sparse bushes grew like hairs, a hawk was perched, on meal-watch intent. So strange and imagination-quickening a rock must have its halo of folk-lore, and this is the story of Tokahaere as told by my friend of Ngati-Raukawa:

Long ago this rock Tokahaere was a human being; he was a man of this world and his home was at Titi-raupenga, that sharp-topped mountain which stands southward yonder, not far from the north-west side of Lake Taupo. (“A famous mountain that; it was a great place for birds—tui, korimako, kaka parrot, and koko or wood pigeon; all these we used to snare and spear there in great numbers and pot in their own fat, page 75 in totara-bark baskets.”) This man had a wife, and she was a most troublesome one. She had love affairs with the gallants of the tribe, she talked a great deal, and it was even said that she beat her husband. The husband, instead of silencing her with his stone club, as of course he should have done, decided to leave her. He set out to travel far away to the northward, to seek another home and a more pleasant wife. He travelled by night, and having supernatural means to aid him, he reached this Aotearoa country by dawn. But his wife's vengeance pursued him. She induced a powerful tohunga to bewitch her husband and the spell fell just when he reached this Manga-komua valley and he was turned to stone.

There is another story, that being a man of extraordinary powers he scooped out this deep gorge-like valley as he came. But daylight broke his magic powers, and then the mighty charms of the tohunga at Titi-raupenga prevailed, and he remained fixed here for ever. Kua whakakohatutia—he was transformed to a rock.

So there stands Tokahaere to-day, his mountainous feet sunk in the Maori fern; a page 76 landmark and a wonder for ever to pakeha and Maori. And it is well that the pakeha should learn, before yet the old tales vanish, of the special mana tapu which invisibly blankets lonely Tokahaere. Though petrified, he has specific magic powers remaining. If you wish to avoid heavy rain or other obstruction or inconvenience on your day's journey, you must pay due respect to Tokahaere by pulling a handful of fern or manuka and laying it at his foot, reciting as you do so this ancient prayer to the spirit of the rock:

Ana to kai na,
Mau e kai te manawa o tauhou.
(Behold thy food; Feed thou on the heart of the stranger.)

That is the ceremony of uruuru-whenua, the propitiation of the abiding spirit of that toka-tipua, the enchanted rock.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

We did not neglect that rite. Our tributes of fern were laid at the huge fire-sculptured foot of Tokahaere, the karakia was recited; and the sun shone brightly for us all that long day's ride through the wide and fenceless Maori prairie.