OLD LEGENDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 December 1938, Page 19 (Supplement)

OLD LEGENDS

STORIES ABOUT THE HOLLY & MISTLETOE. AND OUR OWN POIIUTUKAWA. Some delightful stories and legends I belong to the trees associated witn <n • Christmas season. In the folklore of many countries the same tales may oe traced in varying forms. Of none is this more, true than of those relating to the holly and mistletoe. The ancients held that the holly was a safeguard against lightning, and* an old Yorkshire saying that “the thunder and lightning can’t harm ye if there’s holly in the house,” may have derived from that old belief. It was said in old times that holly was unknown until Christ was born, and that then it sprang up wherever His feet had trodden. An old superstition is that holly must never be brought into the house beforeChristmas and that should it be removed before Candlemas all the luck of tho house will go with it. In Cornwall tho holly was held sacred to the Virgin Mary, and was known as Modryo Marya, or Aunt Mary’s Tree. More than one* story belongs to the pohutukawa, or New Zealand Christmas tree. One tells that a Maori chieftain, when sailing along the coast one day. looked-long at the lovely puhutukawa flaunting its scarlet blossoms along the cliffs, and then flung hi:; headdress of scarlet feathers into the sea, saying that such ornaments were of no account in comparison with those of the trees.

| Another legend of a famous pohutukawa tree comes from Maori mythology. The spirits of the dead on their way from earth wore supposed to travel from all over New Zealand to Capo Reinga, in the extreme north. There they had to leave the land and plunge down through the ocean to the underworld. A giant pohutukawa grew on the cliff and, reluctant to leave earth, the spirits clung desperately to a bough of this tree which hung low over the water. Lower and lower bent the bough, weighed down by the clinging spirits, and the waves dashed against the cliff and thought it rare sport to spray the spirits before they took the inevitable plunge. For many years the great bending bough was pointed out to visitors, but it finally broke off. and in its turn plunged into the ocean.