Above us on the south rose the blue and grey mass of Ngongotaha Mountain. We could see the remnant of the ancient forest on its summit, where, as Matehaere narrated, the fairy tribe Ngati-Rua dwelt of old. Ihenga made friends with those mountain dwellers, and songs learned from the Patupaiarehe are chanted to-day by some of his descendants.
And sometimes there were unions of fairy men and Maori damsels. Indeed, from all accounts the Maori girl was never very loath for an amorous encounter with a fairy forester. But there was one drawback to these little affairs of the passions in the twilight bush. If there was a child, it would be an albino. You knew when you saw one of those freaks of nature that a fairy lover was responsible.
I told Matehaere about an albino woman I remembered well. Many years ago she lived on the bank of the Puniu River, in the Waipa country, and we used to see her now and again in the frontier township Kihikihi.
The blue kauwae tattoo pattern on her chin and lips was a curious contrast to her unnaturally white skin, her flaxen hair and her weak eyes that could not bear the sun. The Maori said that her mother had been loved once upon a time by a fairy bushman who lived on Pirongia Mountain.
“Ah,” said Matehaere, “that was a famous mountain of the fairies, Pirongia, like our range of Ngongotaha above us yonder. There have been korako people, those unnaturally white-skinned folk, in our midst here. They were tapu, those korako. Our tapu has left us now, perhaps; at any rate the young people of our tribes will have none of it. Yet, to us older ones it is real enough. Does it not seem to you that this must be a tapu place? It may be that before long pakeha farms and homes will cover all this land. Then who among the new race on the Waiteti will know anything of the stories I have been telling you? Maybe they will find that holy stone of ours, and will wonder who made those strange marks upon it. Maybe they will even drink of that holy brook below and it will hurt them not. But while I live this Wai-oro-toki shall be Maori and altogether tapu. For the old gods still hold dominion over the silent places.”
Read More: By the Waters of Holy-Brook.
Tales of an Enchanted Valley http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Pom01Lege-t1-body2-d25.html
