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The Autobiography of a Maori

My Mother's Fairy Story

My Mother's Fairy Story

Maori mothers and grandmothers, in entertaining little children, delighted in telling stories of giants and giantesses, particularly of the latter. I don't know why they preferred giantesses, unless they considered them uglier and more wicked than giants. Giantesses are certainly, from all accounts, diabolical.

Let me give a brief, typical story of a giantess, told me by my own mother:

A little boy wanders into the forest and loses his way. After wandering about for a few days and subsisting on wild berries, he hears a peculiar noise, like the snorting of a wild horse. He looks for the cause of the noise and suddenly he espies a nanakia (ogre)—a terrible-looking giantess, whose gray dishevelled hair covers her rugged body, and who, with her long tapering fingernails, could pierce wild pigeons as they perched in the trees. The next day, curious to find out the home of the nanakia the boy climbs to the top of a high hill, from which he can survey the country around and find out his bearings. In the valley below he notices puffs of smoke rising above the trees. To investigate the mystery of the fire, he hurries down into the valley and, warily approaching a dark mass in the wood, he notices it to be a rocky cave from which the smoke is issuing, and by the fire with her back towards him and the gray hair covering her recumbent body and her long fingers pointing in a heap towards the back of the cave, the nanakia is fast asleep. Judging by the heap of fresh pigeon bones lying near the fire, the boy gathers that the giantess has devoured several pigeons page 36at one meal and she is likely to sleep for many hours. He loses no time in turning his face towards where his home lies and runs, afraid lest the nanakia should wake up too soon. As he nears the edge of the forest he hears the cracking of broken trees and the same unmistakable snorting he had heard the day before. He knows that the nanakia is after his blood. Instead of walking through the bush, the monster is stepping from tree-top to tree-top and gaining on him rapidly. He is now in the open and crossing a plain. He again hears the snorting. As the giantess snorts she throws her terrible fingers in front of her as though her little victim is within striking distance. The boy can almost feel the hot breath of the gigantic hag as she snorts and lurches forward. The boy now cries, "Te kohatu nei e matiti, matata!" ("O rock, split and crack"). It opens sufficiently to let him in and then closes. After travelling along the channel revealed by the opening, he comes to the surface, but the nanakia, bewildered by the boy's disappearance, is some distance behind. The race once more continues. When the nanakia is again within striking distance of her victim, the boy once more cries, "Te wiwi nei e, matiti, matata" (O rushes, split and crack.") As the rushes open out the earth opens also and the boy leaps into the opening and is safe once more. The nanakia, fearful lest she should be too near the abode of mortal man, stands and hesitates and then turns back to disappear into the dark and lonely forest.