Patu-paiarehe, the fairies, whose craggy castles defended by the thick dark woods and the fogs and mists,…
- Date of account
- Published 1923
- Source
- Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand
- Reference
- Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand · selected passage 18
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
Patu-paiarehe, the fairies, whose craggy castles defended by the thick dark woods and the fogs and mists, ringed all this harbour round and made the high places of the Peninsula an uncanny land, given up to all manner of enchantments
Published source text
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Source passage
Source text · mention only_Patu-paiarehe_, the fairies, whose craggy castles defended by the thick dark woods and the fogs and mists, ringed all this harbour round and made the high places of the Peninsula an uncanny land, given up to all manner of enchantments. Not that he reposed implicit faith in the fairy stories himself, he told them as he had heard them from his elders in the days of long ago. “We are half _pakeha_ ourselves now, we Ngai-Tahu,” he said, “and our young people deride these notions about the _Patu-paiarehe_. Yet--these hills were different in my young days, when the mists came down and the fog enveloped the little streams tumbling down all the valleys from the gloomy places. We went birding into the forest, and we made clearings for cultivations and cut firewood in the bush for sale to the _pakeha_. Sometimes, when the mists came down and the fog enveloped the hills, on still, calm days our old men and women would say the fairies were out, the sun-shunning _Patu-paiarehe_, and it were well not to venture up the range.
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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