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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 5 (August 1, 1934)

The Lampreys and the Sacred Stones

The Lampreys and the Sacred Stones.

In a recent number of this Magazine I mentioned the very ancient sacred relies which are preserved at the Motu, Bay of Plenty, as fish-bringing talismans. In Taranaki, too, I have come across survivals of this belief in the efficacy of certain sacred stones which have been handed down for centuries among the tohunga families of the tribes. The old warrior chief TuPatea te Rongo, of South Taranaki, told me of his firm belief in the mouri, which ensured an abundance of lamprey eels, a great delicacy of the Maoris.

Tu-patea said that he possessed one of those mouri, or whatu-kura, perhaps the most sacred of all. “I hold it,” he said, “because I am now the chief keeper among the Pakakohi people, of the ancient knowledge handed down by our ancestors. This mouri-wai [talisman of the waters] is hidden away in a certain spot not far from where we are sitting now.” (I was visiting Tu-patea at his home, Te Takere-nui-o-Aotea, at Taumaha.) “This stone is not large, but it is heavy; it is circular in shape, with a hollow in the centre. At the spot where I conceal it in the ground there is a lizard, and this lizard lives in the hole in the stone. It is, in fact, the guardian [kai-tiaki] of the stone; it is the personification of a deity. The peculiar mana of the stone is made manifest in the water. When the season comes for catching the piharau (lampreys) in the Patea River, I unearth the stone, and take it down, to the river yonder, below my farm, and I place it in the water at a certain rock, reciting the ancient prayers. The efficacy of the mouri is there demonstrated by the great abundance of piharau. They are attracted to the spot in very great numbers and are in good fat condition, and our catch is large, season after season. We are particularly fond of this kind of riverfish because of the absence of bones. Our mouri-wai never fails us. It is of great antiquity; it is called The Great Whatu of Turi—who was our ancestral chief, twenty-four generations ago; he commanded the canoe Aotea which voyaged to this country from Tahiti. This is not the only sacred whatu of the fisheries used in Taranaki to-day. There is a similar stone kept near the mouth of the Tangahoe River; it is revered by the people there, and is placed in the water, with invocations to the atua, when the fishing time comes round.”

So spoke grey old Tu-Patea, a thoroughgoing type of the conservative race, who fought the pakeha strenuously in his day. He was always delighted to recall the past, and we went over some of the old battlefields together and he described events of the 1868–69 campaign on the spot from the Maori standpoint, or rather shooting point. He has gone to the Reinga now, but all his curious lore has not perished with him. There are still certain elders in the West Coast tribes who treasure some of the ancient ways.