MAORI FAIRY LORE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 251, 16 April 1910, Page 5

MAORI FAIRY LORE.

Writing in the Sydney "Telegraph" with regard to Mr Clement Wragge's discoveries in the Bay of Islands, "Q" says that they will doubtless be held by some to confirm the theory that when the Maoris of the Great Migration stepped from their canoes they found other inhabitants already there, "the people of the land," they are' called in Maori lore. The Maori traditions are rich in reference to fairies with white skins and fair hair. These fairies, legend says, were living in New Zealand when the Maoris came and were divided into three tribes, "Descendants of the Red One," "Descendants of the Albino" and "Descendants of the Dimly Seen," the lastnamed of which is a title.of unique fitness a§ to.the designation pf a fairy race. The sfapris elairn to have learned the art pf net-making from these fairies, who, being makers of nets and eaters qf fiph, must have had a distinct cprppreality, Besides the fairies there were elves and ogres and tree-spirits that haunted thejjbush in their thousands. It is agreed that the fairies and such wpod-dwelHng peoples were really remnants of a conquered rae?, surviving thus in the midst of the conquerors, upon whom, from mountain cavern or gloomy forest, the dispossessed "people of- the land" struck in retaliation and revenge, until they came to be feared as beings something less or more than human. Possibly in this way, it has been suggested, the original inhabitants of New Zealand still survive in the Maori fairy tale. In the very forests which Mr Wragge has been exploring legend locates a yellow-faced haired tribe of cave-dwelling fairies called gaiitehe, who pftep selzecj filap.ri girls when out the girls sp captured never move returning to their people. It may be urged that the iMaeris brought their fairy lore with them from Uawaiki, as they brought the sweet potato and their dogs when they set fprth to vpyage to a pew land in their great ca,noes. Indeed, one Maori legend actually relates that they carried the fairies with them in a special canoe. But there is other evidence to shpjv that New Zealand was a pepulated ceuntry when the Mapris descended upon it. The people of the country are described in the folk lpre, which has passed pn frpm tpngue tp tpngue, as a small-bpdied race whp were easily cpnquered. Whiteskinned and "b,ad, n'p asihisiei3 w/nn the Slalays §nd seem to have been spme far-wandered branch cf fair races, whp reached the Dpminipn in the cpurse pf a fprgotten, migration, n.qw/ hidden in the mists of time, Their story may be written in stone in Mr Wragge's sculptures, and if it is it wi]l add & chapter pf vivid interest to the history of the country.