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The Maori: Yesterday and To-day

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Night after night in the social wharepuni, the tales of old were told until every person in the community was acquainted with the folk-lore and bushlore and fairy legends of the tribe. The Maori's belief in the unseen and the supernatural is deep-rooted, and is intensified by life in a forest country. The bush-dwelling tribes like the Urewera are full of singular beliefs that are a reflex of the vast untrimmed wilderness in which they live.

Many a blue and misty mountain was an enchanted place, the bower of the fairies, the Patu-paiarehe. Mount Pirongia, in the Waikato, is one of these, the fabled abode of fairies, who, it is said, took a malicious delight in making periodical nocturnal excursions to the homes of the plains-dwelling Maori and carrying off their wives. In the dark moonless nights the lone Maori eel-fisher out on the Waipa banks would hear them singing their fairy songs, and would take good care that his torch did not go out, for fairies fear the fire of mortals. Another famous fairy-mountain is Ngongotaha, near to Lake Rotorua. When the mists hang low on the ferny flanks of Ngongotaha, say the old Maoris, the Patu-paiarehe are abroad, and it is not wise to go up there pig-hunting on such a day. The fairies were sometimes heard singing their fairy hakas. The elder people say that long ago their fathers heard these dance songs chanted high up on the mountain, on still calm days when fog enveloped the upper parts of the range.