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Preface.

Did I know Fred-the-Maori? Goto! what a question? Why! there were at one time not a very great number of people, more especially adults, to be found within a day's journey of New Plymouth New Zealand, but were almost as familar with the broad-set, squat body, the large head, and sonsy, round, genial face of Fred-the-Maori as they were with a wet, stormy, market-day, or a memorandum of account-rendered Talkative Fred he was by some derisively nicknamed! Well! hadn't he too, a perfect right to talk? For hadn't Fred, at least, he himself manies the time asseverated that he had taken, whilst a boy at school at the Grey Institute, the first prize for talking English! Thus Fred, it may reasonably be supposed, wisely judged that in the language of the Pakeha to still maintain an ascendancy over his compatriots; towards this end nothing better could be done than to keep well up the practise; and, who could gainsay the propriety of such a course?

Several years ago, it is now, since loitering one summer afternoon on the black, sandy beach of this locality, that the overpowering heat led me to take a quiet sheltered corner, whereat, on a large, grey boulder, I found a very passably comfortable seat; passably comfortable without a doubt it must have been, for this very reason, that it immediately suggested further developments of dolce far nient. First a burnt-offering of the sublime narcotic, and secondly a re-perusal of the grand old novel of Ivanhoe—one of those flimsily-got-up cheap editions, which I happened to have at the time carrying about with me in my pocket. I soon, certainly though, must have got very deeply engrossed in this almost unparalleled historical-fictional production, for quite unconscious was I of anyone's proximity until suddenly my organs of hearing were assailed by the sound of Fred's conversant voice, saying, “That a good story you now read Maisair?” “Yes, o, o, yes,” I am afraid, in a petulant manner, I replied: for, to tell the truth, I did not feel very well affected by the unlooked-for interuption. Its a very good story, more suavely though I, then immediately supplimented. “English, I suppose,” casuallly observed Frederick. “Yes,” I sibellated—well, despite myself, more rude than polite—adding, “you surely don't suppose it would be Maori, do you?” “Plenty of old stories has the Maori too,” replied Fred, with a slight dash, as I thought then, of painful pique. “Old stories among the Maoris,” I immediately returned supercillously uncivil, “I wonder how far one would have to travel to find the like?” “In the pukepuke up here,” promptly rejoined Fred, simultaneously indicating with the tips of his fingers the particular region where is understood to lie the ganglion of memory.

“Now, I'll tell you what I'll do with you Fred,” said I. in a rather compromising tone, still, I confess, with more of frivolousness than with any actual earnestness, “If you like, we'll toss now up whether I shall read this story out of the book which I now hold in my hand to you, or that you shall tell a good old Maori yarn out of the book which you hold in your head to me!” To this proposition Fred consented complacently and unhesitatingly. The emblem-side of the half-crown that was the particular currency came down uppermost, which decided that the story was to proceed from Fred. A slight hitch though at this particular juncture came in the way of page break Fred's straightway proceeding to ratify the agreement, caused, as I put it down to be, by my inadvertantly, and I may also add, imprudently making the twirling of this valuable piece of silver the arbitrary fiat. As then, all at once, a sudden inspiration seemed to dawn on Fred, at the sight of the forenamed sheeny metal that such was the exact thing that at the moment he wanted most pressingly as a loan for only a short time, until such times as he got paid for some firewood which he said then was owing him. Notwithstanding, feeling a little resentment at such a glaringly bare-faced case of sheer cupidity. I could not forego the chance of having my characteristic liking gratified for traditional records, merely for a capricrous impulse, so I said, offhandedly, here, take the coin Fred, and go on with your yarn without any more—well, the words are not in the dictionary I then used—“shinanikin.” I believe it was. With this temperate rebuff Fred started with his legendary subdivision of lore, and continued too, to my agreeable surprise, on uninteruptedly, as well as on unintermittently for, I should think, fully three hours and chiefly from the incidents then told, and amplified on by Fred, has this tale been written, and written too, in as much conformity to the Maori-Anglo idiom of delivery, as is considered advisable.