Like the elves of other countries, these fairies of Maori Land dread daylight, and appear only by night
- Date of account
- Published 1907
- Source
- Te Tohunga: The ancient legends and traditions of the Maoris
- Reference
- Te Tohunga: The ancient legends and traditions of the Maoris · selected passage 17
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
Like the elves of other countries, these fairies of Maori Land dread daylight, and appear only by night
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyLike the elves of other countries, these fairies of Maori Land dread daylight, and appear only by night. Sometimes, on dark and gloomy days, when the thick mists descend and envelop the bare crags and deep ravines of the mountains of the South, the fairy people will be heard chanting songs in a thin sweet cadence, and then too will be heard the doleful sound of the fairy trumpet, and the faint and plaintive music of the Koauau, or nose-flute, and the voices of the fairy children laughing and singing above the clouds. But most of all they love the thickly-wooded mountains of the North, the Fish of Maui, where they live in their little pas, palisaded like those of the Maoris, and adorned with quaint little carvings and diminutive figures of fairy ancestors. Few mortals can discover those pas. They are hidden far away in the shadiest recesses of the bush, where the mist-maidens hover all day long, and where the Goddess of the Clouds descends nightly and covers her fairy children with her loving mantle. A Tohunga alone can perceive those stockades and houses of the Patu-paiarehe. To ordinary folk who penetrate the fairy country, those works of the little people are to all appearance mere trees and rocks and beds of ferns.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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