Chapter VI.
HILLS OF FAERY.
THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE MIST.
Our talk turned one day to the poetic legendary past of the Port Hills above us and the Banks Peninsula peaks yonder, hemming in Lyttelton Harbour in an annular line of dead fire crags. They were the hills of an artist’s dream this golden afternoon, all their asperities of crag and bare bluff softened and gilded by the mellow light of a calm, bright, windless day. There was just the faintest of hazy films drawing over the nearer hills from the waters. The sea below us at Rapaki lay in unbreathing quiet, as soft, as bright and blue as Kipling’s Indian Ocean. The rich purple of distance painted the most remote of the Peninsula peaks, and here and there a wispy tail of mist floated about the head of a gully that cleft the crumpled hills swelling up into the rocky summits of the Pohue and the Ahu-patiki. Just where the land went steeply up from the head of the bay to the shoulders of Te Ahu-Patiki, otherwise Mount Herbert, we could see the curious light grey rock wall of the Tarahaka, above the Pari-mataa, “Obsidian Cliff,†like a great chute down the mountain side, gleaming in the sun, thetipuarock of the fire gods. Nearer, in the middle of the picture, were the black volcanic cliffs, and the green slopes and pine-groves of the Lepers’ Isle, the island which the Maoris of old called Otamahua, mapped by thepakehaas Quail Island; it was one tragic spot in the picture, a place of living death.
TheKaumatuaspoke of the hilltop homes of thePatu-paiarehe, the fairies, whose craggy castlesdefended by the thick dark woods and the fogs and mists, ringed all this harbour round and made the high places of the Peninsula an uncanny land, given up to all manner of enchantments. Not that he reposed implicit faith in the fairy stories himself, he told them as he had heard them from his elders in the days of long ago. “We are halfpakehaourselves now, we Ngai-Tahu,†he said, “and our young people deride these notions about thePatu-paiarehe. Yet—these hills were different in my young days, when the mists came down and the fog enveloped the little streams tumbling down all the valleys from the gloomy places. We went birding into the forest, and we made clearings for cultivations and cut firewood in the bush for sale to thepakeha. Sometimes, when the mists came down and the fog enveloped the hills, on still, calm days our old men and women would say the fairies were out, the sun-shunningPatu-paiarehe, and it were well not to venture up the range. On brooding quiet days our people could hear the thin voices of the little folk—they were small, fair people, as all the elders said—crying out to each other and singing fairy songs and playing little songs on their wooden or bone flutes, theirkoauauandputorino. This Poho-o-Tamatea, the high peak behind thekaingaof Rapaki, was one of their homes, theirpas, but there were others, the high places of the fairies, all around these hills, from my peak above there right away along the peak-tops touched by the Summit Road, right round to Cooper’s Knobs and then on to the Peninsula, even to Otoki, the haunted mountain which thepakehacalls Brazenose, on the southern side of Akaroa town.â€
Rhodes’s Monument (Home of the Fairies), to the east of Mt. Herbert, taken from Lyttelton.W. A. Taylor, photo
Rhodes’s Monument (Home of the Fairies), to the east of Mt. Herbert, taken from Lyttelton.
W. A. Taylor, photo
TheKaumatuaswept his finger across the southern sky-line, the wild and broken peaks of Banks Peninsula, rising up in powerful slants from the softblue of the harbour, creased with the gullies of water-courses. “Over yonder,†he said, “are the chiefpasof thePatu-paiarehe, which I shall list for you: There is the rock of Te Pohue, whichpakehascall the Monument between Purau and Port Levy; there is Hukuika Peak, on the hill road between Pigeon Bay and Little River; there is the mountain-top of Te U-Kura, which commands all the hill-country of the Peninsula—it is just at the back of the stopping-place called Hilltop on the road from Little River to Akaroa town. Also there are the high rocky peaks which overlook Akaroa Harbour—Pu-Waitaha, or French Hill, between Wainui settlement and Buchanan’s; Otehore, a rocky flat-topped height above French Farm, on the upper part of the harbour; the summit heights above Akaroa town, Purple Peak, Mount Berard and Brazenose—these we call O-te-Patatu, Tara-te-rehu, and Otoki; and lastly Tuhiraki, the sky-pencilling peak, which the French named Mount Bossu, on the western side of the harbour. All these were the mountainpasof the fairies.
“Now, amongst the fairypas,†the word-of-mouth historian went on, “there are two places of particular enchantment. One is that lofty palisade of a peak which you call Brazenose, and the level-topped hill above French Farm. Otoki—the Place of the Axe—is the name for Brazenose, but there is an ancient burying-ground there, upon the misty mountain immediately above the little Maori village of Onuku, on the beach side, which is called Otehore; theWahi-tapu, or cemetery, makes it doubly sacred. This place and the height above French Farm were both called Otehore, and the people of the mists loved them well. On the small piece of level ground on that Otehore which stands above French Farm the fairyhapuofthose parts had theirpa, and there they would gather at night for their fairy meetings, and gather by day also in the foggy weather when no Maori eye could see them; and then would be heard their sweet fairy songs, theirwaiatas, and the tunes they played upon their flutes, sounding faintly from the cloudy mountain.â€
Indeed, on dim and foggy days, and when the wet vapours becloud the long-dead volcano land, it is not difficult to enter into the spirit of the Maori fancy, and in imagination people all these craggy pinnacles with thePatu-paiarehe, and the wooded gulches withMaeroero, the wild men of the bush. When the mists steal down on the rhyolite knobs of the fire-fused Port Hills and the Peninsula, craggy beyond description, peaked in a hundred fantastic shapes, with great black and grey nipples of lava protruding from the grassy slopes and the woody ridges, the land has an eerie look, fit playground for the Forgetful People, as the old Irish would have called them. In the early morning too, when the fogs are lifting from the bays, and here and there a black broken thumb of a peak juts out above the trailing vapours, or the mist-wreaths drape in torn veilings the huge rampart-like scarps, and when the first rosy sunbeams glorify the half-revealed mountains, the poetic mind can well conceive of this region as one of fairy wizardry and all manner of dusk-time magic. One day when it rained and blew, we were motoring over the hills from the Plains to Akaroa, scarcely able to see twenty yards in front of the car when we ran cautiously round to Hilltop. Suddenly the dense masses of fog were rent aside by the wind, and right above us, with a fore-ground of blackened tree-stumps, remnant of the ruined forest, we caught a glimpse of the black, jagged tor which the Maori called Te Puha, thrust up like agreat spearhead by Ruaimoko, the Fire-God; in the light of theKaumatua’sstories it was easy to imagine it a sentry-tower of the fairies, or of such a place of witchery as the Ben Bulben of which we read in W. B. Yeats’s “Celtic Twilight.â€
There is another rugged, dark volcanic crag, wooded about its base, crowning one of these Peninsula ridges, of which the Old Man of Rapaki has a poetic story. This is the pinnacle above and to the north of the Hilltop Hotel, on the divide where the traveller gets his first sight of Akaroa lying more than a thousand feet below. TheKaumatuagave it as one of his fairy peaks, its Native name is Te U-Kura, and as far as I have been able to ascertain, it bears no officialpakehaname. Te U-Kura, he says, is an exceedingly ancient designation; it was a name given by the fairies. It means “The Resting Place of the Ruddy Light.†In his younger days, when he lived at Tikao Bay, on the shores of Akaroa harbour, he frequently observed for himself the peculiar fitness of the Hilltop name. Often at sunset a cloud-cap would rest lightly on the dark skull of the fairy crag, and to this cloud the declining sun would impart a bright red glow, thekuraof the Maori. This was a sign to the weather-wise that a nor’-wester was blowing on the Canterbury Plains—atohu, or token, that was seldom astray. “U†means to rest, as a canoe upon the beach. This surely is a name that thepakehashould imprint upon his Peninsula maps. It lends itself to more than one euphonious variant in thepakeha-tongue, as “Red Cloud’s Rest,†or “Place of the Sunset’s Glow.â€
Behind the town of Akaroa, the grassy hills, lightly wooded here and there like a beautiful wild park, culminate in a craggy skyline, more than a thousand feet above the fields and orchards on the town outskirts. Dark tors of rhyolite, grassed to the base of
Cockayne’s Cairn     Cass Peak
Kennedy’s Bush.W. A. Taylor, photo
Kennedy’s Bush.
W. A. Taylor, photo
their nippled upswells, dreamy on sunny days in their delicate wash of hazy blue. Here near the Stony Bay road saddle, is the legend-haunted O-te-Patatu, the old-time ridge of the fairies and the
titi
. The
titi
or muttonbird has long since disappeared from the Port and Peninsula hills, but in the Maori days it was plentiful on many such high places. It loved to build on lofty hills, where the soil was soft enough to enable it to make its burrows. There was a cliff at O-te-Patatu, says the
Kaumatua
, where the
titi
lived and bred in great numbers in the long ago. The Maori tribes who lived on the beaches and on the trenched and parapeted promontories made expeditions to the hilltop in the season when the young birds were fat, and caught, cooked and preserved them in kelp baskets and pottles, just as the Foveaux Strait and Stewart Island Maoris do at the present time. But the
Patu-paiarche
who lived on the crags of O-te-Patatu and Tara-te-rehu also hunted these
titi
, and slaughtered them in such numbers, in a most unfairylike manner, that presently these fishy petrels became extinct in that locality. A woman of the Ngai-Tahu, or Ngati-Mamoe, at Akaroa, who was said to be in love with a fairy, but who no doubt also loved the palatable muttonbird, chanted this little
waiata
, a song of fairy times which is still to be heard at Rapaki and other Native villages:—
Titi whakatai aro ruaE hoki ra koeKi O-te-Patatu,Ki te pa whakatangiKi te koauau,Ki tauwene aiE raro i au-e!
Titi whakatai aro ruaE hoki ra koeKi O-te-Patatu,Ki te pa whakatangiKi te koauau,Ki tauwene aiE raro i au-e!
Titi whakatai aro ruaE hoki ra koeKi O-te-Patatu,Ki te pa whakatangiKi te koauau,Ki tauwene aiE raro i au-e!
Titi whakatai aro rua
E hoki ra koe
Ki O-te-Patatu,
Ki te pa whakatangi
Ki te koauau,
Ki tauwene ai
E raro i au-e!
(Translation)
O titi, bird of the sea,Bird of the hilltop cave,Come back to O-te-Patatu,To the lofty dwellingWhere the sweet sounds are heard,The sound of the faery flute,The music of the mountainsThat thrilled me through and through!
O titi, bird of the sea,Bird of the hilltop cave,Come back to O-te-Patatu,To the lofty dwellingWhere the sweet sounds are heard,The sound of the faery flute,The music of the mountainsThat thrilled me through and through!
O titi, bird of the sea,Bird of the hilltop cave,Come back to O-te-Patatu,To the lofty dwellingWhere the sweet sounds are heard,The sound of the faery flute,The music of the mountainsThat thrilled me through and through!
O titi, bird of the sea,
Bird of the hilltop cave,
Come back to O-te-Patatu,
To the lofty dwelling
Where the sweet sounds are heard,
The sound of the faery flute,
The music of the mountains
That thrilled me through and through!
The soft and plaintive flute song of the fair-skinned folk who lived on these misty mountains seems to have appealed to the Native heart, for it is described as sweeter by far than thewhakatangitangi, the “making sound upon sound,†of the ordinary Maori flute-players. Distance, aided by imagination, no doubt lent it additional enchantment. And thePatu-paiarehemen appear often to have made themselves agreeable to thewahineMaori, for stories are told of women being taken as wives by the fairy chiefs, and of girls from the Maori villages wandering away into the woods to meet their fairy lovers. The offspring of such unions were always known by their extremely fair skins, unnaturally pale, and their light flaxen hair; they werekorakoor albinos.
And there was another people of the wilds. Sometimes on dark nights the Maori villagers would see the light of torches moving about in bays across Lyttelton Harbour, then the Bay of Raupo, where they knew there was no settlement of their tribe, and they would say to each other, “See! TheMaeroeroare out, spearingpatiki.†TheMaeroerowere the wild men of the woods, fierce hairy giants who sometimes captured Maori women and carried them off to be their wives in the bush of the Port Hills. TheMaeroeroare described as having very long and sharp finger-nails, so long that they were great claws, and it was with these long talons that they speared the flatfish and caught the birds in the forests.
The Summit Road pathway, through the Devil’s Staircase, or The Remarkable Dykes (on the way to Kaituna)
The Summit Road pathway, through the Devil’s Staircase, or The Remarkable Dykes (on the way to Kaituna)
To the matter-of-factpakehaand the modernised Maori there is a very simple explanation of these fairy tales. ThePatu-paiareheand theMaerowere simplythe remnants of aboriginal tribes, such as the Ngati-Mamoe or the Waitaha or their predecessors, driven away into the heart of the mountains and the forests, where they lived a wild, secluded life, existing on the foods of the wilderness. The old English and Scottish belief in fairy people arose in much the sameway, the very word “pixy†comes from the name of the Picts, who were driven into the hills and caves. Nevertheless, for those who like to preserve their Peter Pan fancies and illusions this theory may cheerfully be disregarded, and we may still, on days of mist and cloudy calm, imagine the little tribes of the rocks flitting out from their caves and hollow trees and raising as of old their thin voices in theirwaiatasand piping their fairy sweetkoauaumusic on the level hilltop of Otehore or the dark rock of Tamatea’s Breast.
MOUNT PLEASANT AND ITS “TAPU.â€
Now the Old Man’s memories take him back seawards across the Port Hills to the familiar knolls of Tauhinu-Korokio. This is the Native name of Mount Pleasant, the great grassy upswell of land lifting sixteen hundred feet above sea-level and looking down serenely on the vast curving sand-line of Pegasus Bay. The Maori name is a combination of the names of two Native shrubs which were very plentiful on that portion of the hills in former times and specimens of which may still be seen there.Tauhinuis a heath-like plant found all over New Zealand; it is the Pomaderis phylicaefolia of the botanists. It grows two or three feet high, or sometimes higher, and it is so plentiful and so prone to spread that it has been placed on the Agricultural Department’s index expurgatorious as a noxious weed, in spite of all the sweet heathery perfume of its blossoms which the bees love. Thekorokiois a small bushy black-branched growth which thetauhinu, as the Maoris say, often embraces and smothers, as therataeventually smothers the tree which it clasps. Tauhinu-korokio was an ancientpaof Ngati-Mamoe which stood on the site of Major Hornbrook’s old homestead and the present house of
Hinekura.J. Cowan, photo
Hinekura.
J. Cowan, photo
stay for visitors, just below a remnant of the ancient bush on the northern and sunny slope of the green mountain. There was a good spring of water close by, and this important fact no doubt determined the situation of the Ngati-Mamoe hillmen’s village. In Ngai-Tahu times, after Te Rangi-Whakaputa had conquered thispain the course of his subjugation of the Whaka-Raupo aborigines, the vicinity was found by the Ngai-Tahu to be a very suitable spot for such vegetable foods as thekorauand thepora, orpohata, now extinct; the roots, which were sweet, were dried in the sun and stored inruas, or underground pits and earthed-in storehouses, as potatoes andkumaraare now.Kumaraandtaro, the tropic foods of the north,did not flourish in the hill country of the south, though they did well enough, with care, on favoured parts of the Canterbury Plains and the Coast.
There is in Maori belief an exceedinglytapuspot on Tauhinu-korokio, close to where the old Ngati-Mamoepastood. It was probably either atuahuor a burying-place; thetuahuwas the spot where the tribal gods, or, rather, their symbols in wood and stone, were kept, and where the wise men, thetohungas, resorted for incantation and occult ceremonies and the black art of themakutu, by which enemies might be slain though they were at a great distance, by thought transmission and the malignant projection of the will. It is not well to camp there even now, should you have Maori blood in your veins. The flax-clumps and thetauhinubushes still murmur the name of Ngati-Mamoe, and thoughpakehasheep have long grazed over the site of Tauhinu-korokio andpakehavoices make lively the mountain side, the soil holds the mysterious spell of thetapu. Maoris who have camped on the side of the track which goes over the hills there have spent a night of inexplicable discomfort, inexplicable, that is, but for the presence of thetapuand the unseen spirits of Maoridom. Taare Tikao himself says that many years ago, when he was shearing at Major Hornbrook’s, he was taken suddenly and mysteriously ill, and that the illness was probably the effect of the localtapu. However, these fancies need not trouble thepakeha, whose constitution is not affected by even the most virulent of Maori bedevilments.
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