Two tribes had long been at war, but as neither gained a permanent
victory peace was at last concluded. Then one day the chief Te Ponga,
with some of his followers, approached the fortress of their former
enemies. They were warmly welcomed, ovens were heated, food cooked,
served in baskets and distributed. But the visitors did not eat much,
in order that their waists might be slim when they stood up in the
ranks of the dancers, and that they might look as slight as if their
waists were almost severed in two.
As soon as it began to get dark the villagers danced, and whilst they
sprang nimbly about, Puhihuia, the young daughter of the village
chief, watched them till her time came to enter the ranks. She
performed her part beautifully; her fall-orbed eyes seemed clear and
brilliant as the full moon rising in the horizon, and while the
strangers looked at the young girl they all were quite overpowered
with her beauty; and Te Ponga, their young chief, felt his heart grow
wild with emotion when he saw so much loveliness before him.
Then up sprang the strangers to dance in their turn. Te Ponga waited
his opportunity, and when the time came, danced so beautifully that
the people of the village were surprised at his agility and grace, and
as for the young girl, Puhihuia, her heart conceived a warm passion
for Te Ponga.
When the dance was concluded, everyone, overcome with weariness, went
to sleep--all except Te Ponga, who lay tossing from side to side,
unable to sleep, from his great love for the maiden, and devising
scheme after scheme by which he might have an opportunity of
conversing with her alone. At last he decided to carry out a plan
suggested by his servant. The next night, when he had retired in the
chief's house, he called this servant to fetch him some water; but the
servant, following out the plot, had concealed himself and refused to
respond. Then the chief said to his daughter, "My child, run and fetch
some water for our guest." The maiden rose, and taking a calabash,
went off to fetch some water, and no sooner did Te Ponga see her start
off than he too arose and went out, feigning to be angry with his
slave and going to give him a beating; but as soon as he was out of
the house he went straight off after the girl. He did not well know
the path to the well, but was guided by the voice of the maiden, who
sang merrily as she went along.
When she arrived at the fountain she heard someone behind her, and
turning suddenly around she beheld the young chief. Astonished, she
asked, "What can have brought you here?" He answered, "I came here for
a draught of water." But the girl replied, "Ha, indeed! Did not I come
here to draw water for you? Could not you have remained at my father's
house until I brought the water for you?" Then Te Ponga answered, "You
are the water that I thirsted for." And as the maiden listened to his
words, she thought within herself, "He, then, has fallen in love with
me," and she sat down, and he placed himself by her side, and they
conversed together, and to each of them the words of the other seemed
most pleasant and engaging. Before they separated they arranged a time
when they might escape together, and then they returned to the
village.
When the time came for Te Ponga to leave his host he directed some
dozen men of his to go to the landing-place in the harbor, prepare one
large canoe in which he and his followers might escape, and then to
take the other canoes and cut the lashings which made the top sides
fast to the hulls. The next morning he announced that he must return
to his own country. The chief and his men accompanied him part of the
way to the harbor. Puhihuia and the other girls had stolen a little
way along the road, laughing and joking with the visitors. The chief,
seeing his daughter going on after he had turned back, called out,
"Children, children, come back here!" Then the other girls stopped and
ran back toward the village, but as to Puhihuia, her heart beat but to
the one thought of escaping with her beloved Te Ponga. So she began to
run. Te Ponga and his men joined in the swift flight, and as soon as
they had reached the water they jumped into their canoe, seized their
paddles and shot away, swift as a dart from a string. When the
pursuing villagers arrived at the beach they laid hold of another
canoe, but found that the lashings of all had been cut, so that
pursuit was impossible. Thus the party that had come to make peace
returned joyfully to their own country, with the enemy's young
chieftainess, while their foes stood like fools upon the shore,
stamping with rage and threatening them in vain.
These stories are undoubtedly romantic; but again I ask, are they
stories of romantic love? There is romance and quaint local color in
the feat of the girl who, reversing the story of Hero and Leander,
swam over to her lover; in the wooing of the two girls proposing to an
unseen man up a tree; in the action of the chief who saved the
beautiful girl and her father from dying of thirst, and acted so that
his men came to the conclusion he must love her "almost as well" as
war; in the slyly planned elopement of Te Ponga. But there is nothing
to indicate the quality of the love--to show an "illumination of the
senses by the soul," or a single altruistic trait. Even such touches
of egoistic sentimentality as the phrase "To the heart of each of them
the other appeared pleasing and worthy, so that in the breast of each
there grew up a secret passion for the other;" and again, "he felt his
heart grow wild with emotion, when he saw so much loveliness before
him," are quite certainly a product of Grey's fancy, for Polynesians,
as we have seen, do not speak of the "heart" in that sense, and such a
word as "emotions" is entirely beyond their powers of abstraction and
conception. Grey tells us that he collected different portions of his
legends from different natives, in very distant parts of the country,
at long intervals, and afterward rearranged and rewrote them. In this
way he succeeded in giving us some interesting legends, but a
phonographic record of the _fragments_ related to him, without any
embroidering of "heart-affairs," "wild emotions," and other adornments
of modern novels, would have rendered them infinitely more valuable to
students of the evolution of emotions. It is a great pity that so few
of the recorders of aboriginal tales followed this principle; and it
is strange that such neatly polished, arranged, and modernized tales
as these should have been accepted so long as illustrations of
primitive love.[194]