The fairies of New Zealand are described as a very numerous people,
merry, and always singing like crickets. In appearance they are quite
different from the Maories, the natives of New Zealand; they rather
resemble Europeans, their hair and complexion being remarkably fair.
One day, when Te Kanawa, a chief of one of the Maori tribes, happened to
fall in with a troop of fairies on a hill in the Waikato district, he
heard them distinctly singing some mysterious verses, which he
afterwards repeated to his friends, and which are still preserved in the
poetry of the New Zealanders.
Te Kanawa had died before any Europeans arrived in New Zealand, but the
details of his encounter with the fairies are not forgotten by the
people. They say that he had gone out with his dogs to catch Kiwis,[64]
when night came on and he found himself right at the top of Pukemore, a
high hill. There it was where the fairies approached the brave chief,
and frightened him almost to death. He lighted a fire, and therewith
scared them a little. Whenever the fire blazed up brightly, off went the
fairies and hid themselves, peeping out from behind stumps of trees; and
when it burnt low, back they came close to it, merrily singing and
dancing.
The sudden thought struck the trembling chief that he might perhaps
induce the fairies to go away if he gave them the jewels he had about
him; so he took off a beautiful little figure carved in green jasper,
which he wore as a neck ornament; then he pulled out his jasper ear-drop
finely carved, and also his earring made of the tooth of a tiger-shark.
Fearing lest the fairies should touch him, he took a stick, and, fixing
it into the ground, hung the precious presents upon it. Directly after
the fairies had ended their song they examined the trinkets; and they
took the shadow from them, which they handed about from one to another
through the whole party. Suddenly they all vanished carrying with them
the shadows of the jewels, but leaving behind the jewels themselves.
The verses which Te Kanawa heard the fairies sing are, as has been
already said, still known, and the Maories cite them in proof that
everything happened to their brave chief, Te Kanawa, as it is
related.[65]