Chapter III

Once on Kakepuku

This story was told to me by the old blind man Te Pou, as we sat under the comfortable lee of a high row of flaxbushes at his little kainga, under the shadow of Mount Kakepuku. This ancient firepeak, a miniature Ngauruhoe in outline, but, unlike Ngauruhoe, its active volcanic age long past, is the most remarkable mountain along the old Maori border. Its form is set in bold down-sweeping lines of rest; its furrowed sides are green with high fern and clumps of forest. Its top is cut off in a saucer-shaped crater, jungly-wooded, and on the rim of the crater are the fern-grown earthworks of immemorial forts. Kakepuku looks a romantic highplace even in the bright cloudless noon of summer; on days of fog, such as it often sees, it is a mountain of enchantment, with an added altitude to its upthrust shoulders as it looms dark blue through the swirling banks of vapour, a peak steeped with native legendry and poetry, of which my old page 44 warrior acquaintance was the chief repository among the small hapus that dwelt around its foot.

“My friend,” said Te Pou, “now that we are talking of things supernatural, let me tell you something about this mountain above us, my ancestor, Kakepuku. In the first place, it is well known to all of us, of course, that Kakepuku was a human being long, long ago. He was a man, and yonder smaller mountain, Kawa”—the old man pointed to a gently-rounded pa-terraced cone a few miles away due east—“was his wife. For love of him she rejected that other fellow across the great swamp yonder, the hill which is called Puke-tarata. There are some strange tales about the love-making ways of these ancient mountain parents of ours. But what I want to tell you of are the mysterious people who haunt these lofty places. Yon great range of Pirongia, as you know well enough, is the chief home of the Patu-paiarehe, the fairy tribe; their citadel is there, on the very summit of the main peak, the height we call Hihikiwi. On days of cloud and fog they roam abroad, but they are only to be seen by the eyes of the wise men, the tohunga.

“Now, when I was a young fellow, and that was a very long time ago, there came to our home here at the foot of Kakepuku a tohunga, a very skilful man in incantations and Maori medicines, a man whose name was Panapa; he came from the lower Waikato. The purpose for which he came was to cure his relative Taiepa, my grandfather, who lay ill in his whare. Panapa examined the old man, and then announced that he must go forth to the forest and procure a remedy, the water or juice which is contained in a certain kind of aka, or bush-vine. He bade me bring a large bottle—it had contained rum, which was Taiepa's favourite medicine before the tohunga arrived— and also a tin pannikin, and having placed these in a flax kit which I slung on my shoulders, we set forth.

“The tohunga led the way up the mountain side by a narrow track used sometimes by hunters of the wild pig. We climbed until we had reached a thick patch of forest in a deep hollow on the western side of the peak, facing the fairy-peopled ranges of Pirongia. The bush was very much entangled with supplejacks and rata and aka climbers; the trees were very large, page 46 and spread a close roof of foliage over our heads, so that in the depths of this Wao-nui-a-Tane it was a kind of twilight. It was very silent there, and no birds sang in the trees. The clouds hung low that day, and the thin fog that half-veiled the upper part of the mountain became thicker as we entered the high forest.

“My companion Panapa searched about in the wood until he found the particular kind of hanging vine of which he had come in search. It was an aka, closely resembling the rata vine, and it was about as thick round as my arm. Taking his small tomahawk from his girdle, and bidding me stand by with the pannikin and the empty rum-bottle, Panapa slashed away at the aka. He cut it into sections each about a foot in length, and as each was cut from the hanging vine he held it over the pannikin in my hands and drained out the brown-coloured watery juice which it contained. This he did with each length of aka, until the bottle was about half-full.

“Presently, when the tohunga was seated on the ground carefully emptying the contents of the pannikin into the bottle, I picked up the tomahawk, and moving a page 47 little distance further into the bush, I began cutting away at another aka hanging down like a great eel from a lofty tree. I had delivered only one blow, and was in the act of dealing another, when a strange and terrifying thing happened. The forest had been perfectly still for it was a windless, heavy day. Suddenly the tree-tops shook, as from the passage of a strong wind, and the branches creaked and all the leaves of the forest made a loud, murmuring, swishing sound. The bush was full of small unearthly voices. It sent shivers down my backbone, and the hair stood up on my head like the bristles of the wild boar. My legs shook, my heart rolled about in my breast with fright of what I knew not. All this was in an instant of time, and next moment I turned about to call to my companion the tohunga.

“But he had vanished! A few moments before he had been sitting there, with the bottle and pannikin before him—now he was gone! The bottle and pannikin were still there, and there were the marks of Panapa's knees in the soft mossy ground. I called aloud, in a shaky voice, ‘Panapa, O Panapa, where are you?’ The forest voices echoed page 48 my call jeeringly, but of Panapa there was no sound.

“In an overpowering fright I rushed out through the bush, leaving the bush medicine vessels there on the ground, and emerged on the open fern slopes. I looked about fearfully. There was no wind whatever, and the forest was all silent and motionless again! Panapa was nowhere in sight. It was as though the earth had swallowed him up, or the ghostly hands that shook the forest trees had, in an eye-wink, borne him away.

“I called again, more loudly than before, but there was no reply, and now what could I do? I would not dare to return to the bush with its mysterious voices and rustlings. I would willingly have fought a human assailant, but what can you do against these impalpable foes in the bush who have no bodies to be smitten and whose unseen presence makes the hair prick upwards like pig's bristles?

page break In the heart of the Fairy Bush. page break A Maori artist's idea of Hatupatu

This is the carved sliding window of a Maori house at Whakarewarewa.

(See Chapter “The Story of Hatupatu and Kura-of-the-Claws,” page 119.) page 49 tohunga had vanished, and how the forest spoke to me in terrifying wordless tongues, and I asked my sick grandfather, old Taiepa, what it all meant. And he answered with but two words, as he stretched up his hand towards the mountain: ‘The Patu-paiarehe!’ “Well”—and the old blind legend-keeper took a long breath after his excitedly vivid narrative, full of dramatic gesture—“well, there was I, safe outside the forest, and down I travelled as fast as I could lay footto track, and I stopped not until I had reached this village, and told my tale to the people. I told how thehad vanished, and how the forest spoke to me in terrifying wordless tongues, and I asked my sick grandfather, old Taiepa, what it all meant. And he answered with but two words, as he stretched up his hand towards the mountain: ‘The!’

“And that is what it was. We sat there in the meeting-house, and the old men and women talked of the fairy tribes and of their tricky ways with mortals, and the young people's eyes grew wider and wider with each story of forest wizardry.

“We had the evening meal, and again talked. It was now dark, and a fire burned in the middle of the big whare, at the foot of the carved house-pillar. Suddenly, in its flickering light we saw our missing man, Panapa the tohunga! The lost one had returned. In his hand he carried my flax kit, with the half-full bottle of aka juice and the tin pannikin; in his belt was the little tomahawk. At first we imagined it was but the ghost of Panapa—but there he was in the flesh.

“ ‘Panapa, O Panapa!’ the people page 50 exclaimed. ‘Where have you been? How did you vanish from the side of the boy Te Pou!’ And the tohunga, upon whose face sat a strange half-dazed look, began a long story which occupied till well on to midnight. And this is the substance of his curious tale:

“It was the fairies who had snatched him away—the Patu-paiarehe from Pirongia. On such dim and cloudy days as these they often crossed from their home mountain to Kakepuku on the wings of the fogs and mists, for they loved to gather on the high forehead of sacred Kakepuku. The bush in which Panapa and I had halted to get the water of the aka vines was their special haunt, and they loved to suck the juice of those vines themselves for it was a drink of the gods and fairies. Panapa had fortified himself against them by repeating charms and incantations as he travelled up, and as he began his work, and all would have gone well but for my interference. I should have contented myself with holding the vessels for the aka liquor, but no—I must go chopping away at the sacred vines without asking Panapa's permission. My heedless actions had brought down upon us both the anger of the fairy guardians of page 51 the forest. The cutting of the aka was mahi tohunga—priestly work—not to be entered upon lightly, and such an inexperienced youth as I was should never have used that tomahawk. And the noise of the forest leaves and the waving and creaking of the branches was caused by the forest gods—the Patu-paiarehe, as they seized Panapa, and bore him away with them. They carried him off in the twinkling of an eye, through the upper air; the low-lying banks of fog concealed their passage; they whisked him away, like the wave of a hand, to their fairy fort on the top of Hihikiwi, the summit of Pirongia.

“And Panapa was set down there, surrounded by a great ring of the most strange looking tribe he had ever beheld. Those nearest him were like people of this world, dressed like Maoris of old, in garments made of toi and flax, but their faces were fairer than Maoris, a pale hue as if they were ever strangers to full daylight. Their eyes were blue, like the lakes or the ocean on a sunshiny day. Some of their women were amazingly beautiful to Panapa's eye, but for their excessive whiteness of skin. All around gathered the fairies, page 52 and as Panapa ventured to lift his eyes he saw other creatures, or rather apparitions, in the trees that overhung the meeting-place. There were large heads without bodies to them, heads with eyes staring like owls' eyes; and there were hands without any bodies. Panapa kept hard at his karakia, his incantations, repeating them under his breath as fast as he could, and ever he called upon his atua, his special family deity, who was the spirit of a famous ancestor, for deliverance from this affrighting place.

“The fairy chiefs held a council there on Hihikiwi; they discussed what should be done with Panapa for his intrusion upon their sacred places. And Panapa, calling again upon his god, made answer, and pleaded the ignorance of his youthful companion. And his god came to his aid, the spirit of his ancestor: and it so came that the fairy chiefs Te Whanawhana and Te Rangi-pouri (for Panapa heard their names) and their fellow-chiefs of Pirongia mountain, consented to return the tohunga to his world of light and life. Had it been otherwise, he would have remained to become a fairy priest for the Patu-paiarehe page 53 and to live for ever in the cloudy mountains.

“And again Panapa found himself borne from the ground and carried through the air, supported by the unseen hands which had whisked him away—and, like a flash, the fairies had gone and all was silent again—and there he found himself stretched on the mossy ground in the bush on Kakepuku, and beside him he saw his tomahawk and bottle and the tin pannikin!

“And that was how it ended, this amazing experience of Panapa's. In a dreamy, half-dazed way he looked about him, remembered where he was, then picked up his tomahawk and the bottle of bush-vine juice and the pannikin, and wandered out of the lonely forest and down the mountainside and home to us here at Pokuru. And that was the fortunate ending of Panapa's adventure with the Patu-paiarehe.”

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“And what about the sick man?” I asked, when the story-teller had ended. “How did he fare after all this?”

“Oh, old Taiepa,” said Te Pou. “I had forgotten about him for the moment. Oh, the aka juice was an exceedingly powerful page 54 medicine, and it cured him. But it was not the bush medicine alone; it was strong to cure him because it had been charmed and charmed through and through by Panapa the tohunga, and these charms were made powerful by Panapa's ancestral god. For what avail is there in charms and prayers unless you have a god strong enough to give effect to them? And, my friend, I think it was exceedingly fortunate for Panapa that he possessed a god of such mana. Had it not been so he would have been bound to the forests for ever, in the fairy kainga on Pirongia's highest peak.”