--- title: The Little People of the Mist. — Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury,… · full text with trees description: The Little People of the Mist., «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: Our talk turned one day to the poetic legendary past of the Port Hills above us and the Banks Peninsula --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/14/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Ca…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/) / The Little People of the Mist. # The Little People of the Mist. The Little People of the Mist. of «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan: the whole text, 73 sentences and 2431 words. The small number after every sentence leads to its own page with its syntax tree and pragmatics, parsed by Mova itself. 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.[1](1/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[2](2/ "tree and pragmatics") There was just the faintest of hazy films drawing over the nearer hills from the waters.[3](3/ "tree and pragmatics") The sea below us at Rapaki lay in unbreathing quiet, as soft, as bright and blue as Kipling’s Indian Ocean.[4](4/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[5](5/ "tree and pragmatics") 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, the \_tipua\_ rock of the fire gods.[6](6/ "tree and pragmatics") 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 the \_pakeha\_ as Quail Island; it was one tragic spot in the picture, a place of living death.[7](7/ "tree and pragmatics") The \_Kaumatua\_ spoke of the hilltop homes of the \_Patu-paiarehe\_, the fairies, whose craggy castles defended 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.[8](8/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[9](9/ "tree and pragmatics") “We are half \_pakeha\_ ourselves now, we Ngai-Tahu,” he said, “and our young people deride these notions about the \_Patu-paiarehe\_.[10](10/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[11](11/ "tree and pragmatics") We went birding into the forest, and we made clearings for cultivations and cut firewood in the bush for sale to the \_pakeha\_.[12](12/ "tree and pragmatics") 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-shunning \_Patu-paiarehe\_, and it were well not to venture up the range.[13](13/ "tree and pragmatics") 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, their \_koauau\_ and \_putorino\_.[14](14/ "tree and pragmatics") This Poho-o-Tamatea, the high peak behind the \_kainga\_ of Rapaki, was one of their homes, their \_pas\_, 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 the \_pakeha\_ calls Brazenose, on the southern side of Akaroa town.”[15](15/ "tree and pragmatics") Mt.[16](16/ "tree and pragmatics") Herbert, taken from Lyttelton.[17](17/ "tree and pragmatics") \_W. A. Taylor, photo\_\][18](18/ "tree and pragmatics") The \_Kaumatua\_ swept his finger across the southern sky-line, the wild and broken peaks of Banks Peninsula, rising up in powerful slants from the soft blue of the harbour, creased with the gullies of water-courses.[19](19/ "tree and pragmatics") “Over yonder,” he said, “are the chief \_pas\_ of the \_Patu-paiarehe\_, which I shall list for you: There is the rock of Te Pohue, which \_pakehas\_ call 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.[20](20/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[21](21/ "tree and pragmatics") All these were the mountain \_pas\_ of the fairies.[22](22/ "tree and pragmatics") “Now, amongst the fairy \_pas\_,” the word-of-mouth historian went on, “there are two places of particular enchantment.[23](23/ "tree and pragmatics") One is that lofty palisade of a peak which you call Brazenose, and the level-topped hill above French Farm.[24](24/ "tree and pragmatics") 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; the \_Wahi-tapu\_, or cemetery, makes it doubly sacred.[25](25/ "tree and pragmatics") This place and the height above French Farm were both called Otehore, and the people of the mists loved them well.[26](26/ "tree and pragmatics") On the small piece of level ground on that Otehore which stands above French Farm the fairy \_hapu\_ of those parts had their \_pa\_, 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, their \_waiatas\_, and the tunes they played upon their flutes, sounding faintly from the cloudy mountain.”[27](27/ "tree and pragmatics") 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 the \_Patu-paiarehe\_, and the wooded gulches with \_Maeroero\_, the wild men of the bush.[28](28/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[29](29/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[30](30/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[31](31/ "tree and pragmatics") 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 a great spearhead by Ruaimoko, the Fire-God; in the light of the \_Kaumatua’s\_ stories 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.”[32](32/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[33](33/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[34](34/ "tree and pragmatics") The \_Kaumatua\_ gave 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 official \_pakeha\_ name.[35](35/ "tree and pragmatics") Te U-Kura, he says, is an exceedingly ancient designation; it was a name given by the fairies.[36](36/ "tree and pragmatics") It means “The Resting Place of the Ruddy Light.”[37](37/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[38](38/ "tree and pragmatics") 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, the \_kura\_ of the Maori.[39](39/ "tree and pragmatics") This was a sign to the weather-wise that a nor’-wester was blowing on the Canterbury Plains--a \_tohu\_, or token, that was seldom astray.[40](40/ "tree and pragmatics") “U” means to rest, as a canoe upon the beach.[41](41/ "tree and pragmatics") This surely is a name that the \_pakeha\_ should imprint upon his Peninsula maps.[42](42/ "tree and pragmatics") It lends itself to more than one euphonious variant in the \_pakeha\_-tongue, as “Red Cloud’s Rest,” or “Place of the Sunset’s Glow.”[43](43/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[44](44/ "tree and pragmatics") Dark tors of rhyolite, grassed to the base of[45](45/ "tree and pragmatics") Cockayne’s Cairn Cass Peak[46](46/ "tree and pragmatics") Kennedy’s Bush.[47](47/ "tree and pragmatics") \_W. A. Taylor, photo\_ \][48](48/ "tree and pragmatics") their nippled upswells, dreamy on sunny days in their delicate wash of hazy blue.[49](49/ "tree and pragmatics") Here near the Stony Bay road saddle, is the legend-haunted O-te-Patatu, the old-time ridge of the fairies and the \_titi\_.[50](50/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[51](51/ "tree and pragmatics") It loved to build on lofty hills, where the soil was soft enough to enable it to make its burrows.[52](52/ "tree and pragmatics") There was a cliff at O-te-Patatu, says the \_Kaumatua\_, where the \_titi\_ lived and bred in great numbers in the long ago.[53](53/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[54](54/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[55](55/ "tree and pragmatics") 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:--[56](56/ "tree and pragmatics") 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\![57](57/ "tree and pragmatics") (Translation)[58](58/ "tree and pragmatics") 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\![59](59/ "tree and pragmatics") 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 the \_whakatangitangi\_, the “making sound upon sound,” of the ordinary Maori flute-players.[60](60/ "tree and pragmatics") Distance, aided by imagination, no doubt lent it additional enchantment.[61](61/ "tree and pragmatics") And the \_Patu-paiarehe\_ men appear often to have made themselves agreeable to the \_wahine\_ Maori, 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.[62](62/ "tree and pragmatics") The offspring of such unions were always known by their extremely fair skins, unnaturally pale, and their light flaxen hair; they were \_korako\_ or albinos.[63](63/ "tree and pragmatics") And there was another people of the wilds.[64](64/ "tree and pragmatics") 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\![65](65/ "tree and pragmatics") The \_Maeroero\_ are out, spearing \_patiki\_.”[66](66/ "tree and pragmatics") The \_Maeroero\_ were 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.[67](67/ "tree and pragmatics") The \_Maeroero\_ are 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.[68](68/ "tree and pragmatics") pathway, through the Devil’s Staircase, or The Remarkable Dykes (on the way to Kaituna)\][69](69/ "tree and pragmatics") To the matter-of-fact \_pakeha\_ and the modernised Maori there is a very simple explanation of these fairy tales.[70](70/ "tree and pragmatics") The \_Patu-paiarehe\_ and the \_Maero\_ were simply the 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.[71](71/ "tree and pragmatics") The old English and Scottish belief in fairy people arose in much the same way, the very word “pixy” comes from the name of the Picts, who were driven into the hills and caves.[72](72/ "tree and pragmatics") 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 their \_waiatas\_ and piping their fairy sweet \_koauau\_ music on the level hilltop of Otehore or the dark rock of Tamatea’s Breast.[73](73/ "tree and pragmatics") - ← previous: [How the Sacred Fire Came to Witch Hill.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/13/) - next →: [Mount Pleasant and Its “tapu.”](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/15/) - ↑ back to [Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/)