Polynesian Mythology · The Legend of Tāwhaki (1/2)

The Legend of Tāwhaki

Now quitting the deeds of Māui, let those of Tāwhaki be recounted. He was the son of Hema and Urutonga, and he had a younger brother named Karihi. Tāwhaki having taken Hinepiripiri as a wife, he went one day with his brothers-in-law to fish from a flat reef of rocks which ran far out into the sea. He had four brothers-in-law; two of these, when tired of fishing, returned towards their village, and he went with them; when they drew near the village, they attempted to murder him, and thinking they had slain him, buried him; they then went on their way to the village, and when they reached it their young sister said to them, “Why, where is your brother-in-law?” and they replied,

“Oh, they’re all fishing.”

So the young wife waited until the other two brothers came back, and when they reached the village they were questioned by their young sister, who asked, “Where is your brother-in-law?” and the two who had last arrived answered her,

“Why, the others all went home together long since.” So the young wife suspected that they had killed her husband, and ran off at once to search for him; and she found where he had been buried, and on examining him ascertained that he had only been insensible, and was not quite dead; then with great difficulty she got him upon her back, and carried him home to their house, and carefully washed his wounds, and staunched the bleeding.

Tāwhaki, when he had a little recovered, said to her, “Fetch some wood, and light a fire for me;” and as his wife was going to do this, he said to her,

“If you see any tall tree growing near you, fell it, and bring that with you for the fire.” His wife went, and saw a tree growing such as her husband spoke of; so she felled it, and put it upon her shoulder and brought it along with her; and when she reached the house, she put the whole tree upon the fire without chopping it into pieces; and it was this circumstance that led her to give the name of Wahieroa (long-log-of-wood-for-the-fire) to their first son, for Tāwhaki had told her to bring this log of wood home, and to call the child after it, that the duty of avenging his father’s wrongs might often be recalled to his mind.

As soon as Tāwhaki had recovered from his wounds, he left the place where his faithless brothers-in-law lived, and went away, taking all his own warriors and their families with him, and built a fortified village upon the top of a very lofty mountain, where he could easily protect himself; and they dwelt there. Then he called aloud to the gods, his ancestors, for revenge, and they let the floods of heaven descend, and the earth was overwhelmed by the waters, and all human beings perished; and the name given to that event was, “The overwhelming of the Mataaho,” and the whole of that race perished.

When this feat was accomplished, Tāwhaki and his younger brother next went to seek revenge for the death of their father. It was a different race who had carried off and slain the father of Tāwhaki; the name of that race was the Ponaturi. The country they inhabited was underneath the waters, but they had a large house on the dry land, to which they resorted to sleep at night; the name of that large house was “Mānawatāne.”

The Ponaturi had slain the father of Tāwhaki, and carried off his body, but his father’s wife they had carried off alive, and kept as a captive. Tāwhaki and his younger brother went upon their way to seek out that people and to revenge themselves upon them. At length they reached a place from whence they could see the house called Mānawatāne. At the time they arrived near the house there was no one there but their mother, who was sitting near the door; but the bones of their father were hung up inside the house, under its high sloping roof. The whole tribe of the Ponaturi were at that time in their country under the waters, but at the approach of night they would return to their house, to Mānawatāne.

Whilst Tāwhaki and his younger brother Karihi were coming along still at a great distance from the house, Tāwhaki began to repeat an incantation, and the bones of his father, Hema, felt the influence of this, and rattled loudly together where they hung under the roof of the house, for gladness, when they heard Tāwhaki repeating his incantations as he came along, for they knew that the hour of revenge had now come. As the brothers drew nearer, their mother, Urutonga, heard the voice of Tāwhaki, and she wept for gladness in front of her children, who came repeating incantations upon their way. And when they reached at length the house, they wept over their mother, over old Urutonga. When they had ended weeping, their mother said to them, “My children, hasten to return hence, or you will both certainly perish. The people who dwell here are a very fierce and savage race.”

Karihi said to her, “How low will the sun have descended when those you speak of return home?” and she replied,

“They will return here when the sun sinks beneath the ocean.”

Then Kahiri asked her, “What did they save you alive for?” and she answered,

“They saved me alive that I might watch for the rising of the dawn. They make me ever sit watching here at the door of the house; hence this people have named me ‘Tatau,’ or ‘the door;’ and they keep on throughout the night calling out to me, ‘Ho, Tatau, there! is it dawn yet?’ and then I call out in answer, ‘No, no; it is deep night, it is lasting night, it is still night. Compose yourselves to sleep, sleep on.’ ”

Karihi then said to his mother, “Cannot we hide ourselves somewhere here?”

Their mother answered, “You had better return; you cannot hide yourselves here, the scent of you will be perceived by them.”

“But,” said Karihi, “we will hide ourselves away in the thick thatch of the house.”

Their mother, however, answered, “ ’Tis of no use, you cannot hide yourselves there.”

All this time Tāwhaki sat quite silent; but Karihi said, “We will hide ourselves here, for we know incantations which will render us invisible to all.”

On hearing this, their mother consented to their remaining, and attempting to avenge their father’s death. So they climbed up to the ridgepole of the house, upon the outside of the roof, and made holes in the thick layers of reeds which formed the thatch of the roof, and crept into them and covered themselves up; and their mother called to them, saying, “When it draws near dawn, come down again, and stop up every chink in the house, so that no single ray of light may shine in.”

At length the day closed, and the sun sank below the horizon, and the whole of that strange tribe left the water in a body, and ascended to the dry land; and, according to their custom from time immemorial, they sent one of their number in front of them, that he might carefully examine the road, and see that there were no hidden foes lying in wait for them either on the way or in their house. As soon as this scout arrived at the threshold of the house, he perceived the scent of Tāwhaki and Karihi; so he lifted up his nose and turned sniffing all round the inside of the house. As he turned about, he was on the point of discovering that strangers were hidden there, when the rest of the tribe (whom long security had made careless) came hurrying on, and crowding into the house in thousands, so that from the denseness of the crowd the scent of the strange men was quite lost. The Ponaturi then stowed themselves away in the house until it was entirely filled up with them, and by degrees they arranged themselves in convenient places, and at length all fell fast asleep.

At midnight Tāwhaki and Karihi stole down from the roof of the house, and found that their mother had crept out of the door to meet them, so they sat at the doorway whispering together.

Karihi then asked his mother, “Which is the best way for us to destroy these people who are sleeping here?”

And their mother answered, “You had better let the sun kill them, its rays will destroy them.”

Having said this, Tatau crept into the house again; presently an old man of the Ponaturi called out to her, “Ho, Tatau, Tatau, there; is it dawn yet?”

And she answered, “No, no, it is deep night⁠—it is lasting night; ’tis still night; sleep soundly, sleep on.”

When it was very near dawn, Tatau whispered to her children, who were still sitting just outside the door of the house, “See that every chink in the doorway and window is stopped, so that not a ray of light can penetrate here.”

Presently another old man of the Ponaturi called out again, “Ho, Tatau there, is not it near dawn yet?”

And she answered, “No, no, it is night; it is lasting night; ’tis still night; sleep soundly, sleep on.”

This was the second time that Tatau had thus called out to them.

At last dawn had broken⁠—at last the sun had shone brightly upon the earth, and rose high in the heavens; and the old man again called out, “Ho, Tatau there; is not it dawn yet?”

And she answered, “Yes.” And then she called out to her children, “Be quick, pull out the things with which you have stopped up the window and the door.”

So they pulled them out, and the bright rays of the sun came streaming into the house, and the whole of the Ponaturi perished before the light; they perished not by the hand of man, but withered before the sun’s rays.8

When the Ponaturi had been all destroyed, Tāwhaki and Karihi carefully took down their father’s bones from the roof of the house, and burnt the house with fire, together with the bodies of all those who were in it, and who had perished, scorched by the bright rays of the sun; they then returned again to their own country, taking with them their mother, and carefully carrying the bones of their father.

The fame of Tāwhaki’s courage in thus destroying the race of Ponaturi, and a report also of his manly beauty, chanced to reach the ears of a young maiden of the heavenly race who live above in the skies; so one night she descended from the heavens to visit Tāwhaki, and to judge for herself whether these reports were true. She found him lying sound asleep, and after gazing on him for some time, she stole to his side and laid herself down by him. He, when disturbed by her, thought that it was only some female of this lower world, and slept again; but before dawn the young girl stole away again from his side, and ascended once more to the heavens. In the early morning Tāwhaki awoke and felt all over his sleeping place with both his hands, but in vain, he could nowhere find the young girl.

From that time Tangotango,9 the girl of the heavenly race, stole every night to the side of Tāwhaki, and lo, in the morning she was gone, until she found that she had conceived a child, who was afterwards named Arahuta; then full of love for Tāwhaki, she disclosed herself fully to him and lived constantly in this world with him, deserting for his sake her friends above; and he discovered that she who had so loved him belonged to the race whose home is in the heavens.

Whilst thus living with him, this girl of the heavenly race, his second wife, said to him, “Oh, Tāwhaki, if our baby so shortly now to be born should prove a son, I will wash the little thing before it is baptized; but if it should be a little girl then you shall wash it.”

When the time came Tangotango had a little girl, and before it was baptized Tāwhaki took it to a spring to wash it, and afterwards held it away from him as if it smelt badly, and said, “Faugh, how badly the little thing smells.” Then Tangotango, when she heard this said of her own dear little baby, began to sob and cry bitterly, and at last rose up from her place with her child, and began to take flight towards the sky, but she paused for one minute with one foot resting upon the carved figure at the end of the ridgepole of the house above the door. Then Tāwhaki rushed forward, and springing up tried to catch hold of his young wife, but missing her, he entreatingly besought her, “Mother of my child, oh return once more to me!”

But she in reply called down to him, “No, no, I shall now never return to you again.”

Tāwhaki once more called up to her, “At least, then, leave me some remembrance of you.”

Then his young wife called down to him, “These are my parting words of remembrance to you. Take care that you lay not hold with your hands of the loose root of the creeper, which, dropping from aloft, sways to and fro in the air; but rather lay fast hold on that which, hanging down from on high, has again struck its fibres into the earth.” Then she floated up into the air, and vanished from his sight.

Tāwhaki remained plunged in grief, for his heart was torn by regrets for his wife and his little girl. One moon had waned after her departure, when Tāwhaki, unable longer to endure such sufferings, called out to his younger brother, to Karihi, saying, “Oh, brother, shall we go and search for my little girl?”

And Karihi consented, saying, “Yes, let us go.” So they departed, taking two slaves with them as companions for their journey.

When they reached the pathway along which they intended to travel, Tāwhaki said to the two slaves who were accompanying himself and his brother, “You being unclean or unconsecrated persons, must be careful when we come to the place where the road passes the fortress of Tōngāmeha, not to look up at it for it is enchanted, and some evil will befall you if you do.” They then went along the road, and when they came to the place mentioned by Tāwhaki, one of the slaves looked up at the fortress, and his eye was immediately torn out by the magical arts of Tōngāmeha, and he perished. Tāwhaki and Karihi then went upon the road, accompanied by only one slave. They at last reached the spot where the ends of the tendrils which hung down from heaven reached the earth, and they there found an old ancestress of theirs, who was quite blind, and whose name was Matakerepō. She was appointed to take care of the tendrils, and she sat at the place where they touched the earth, and held the ends of one of them in her hands.

This old lady was at the moment employed in counting some taro roots, which she was about to have cooked, and as she was blind she was not aware of the strangers who stole quietly and silently up to her. There were ten taro roots lying in a heap before her. She began to count them, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Just at this moment Tāwhaki quietly slipped away the tenth; the old lady felt about everywhere for it, but she could not find it. She thought she must have made some mistake, and so began to count her taro roots over again very carefully, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Just then Tāwhaki had slipped away the ninth. She was now quite surprised, so she counted them again quite slowly, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight; and as she could not find the two that were missing, she at last guessed that somebody was playing a trick upon her, so she pulled her weapon out, which she always sat upon, to keep it safe, and standing up turned round, feeling about her as she moved, to try if she could find Tāwhaki and Karihi; but they very gently stooped down to the ground and lay close there, so that her weapon passed over them, and she could not feel anybody; when she had thus swept her weapon all round her, she sat down and put it under her again. Karihi then struck her a blow upon the face, and she, quite frightened, threw up her hands to her face, pressing them on the place where she had been struck, and crying out, “Oh! who did that?” Tāwhaki then touched both her eyes, and, lo, she was at once restored to sight, and saw quite plainly, and she knew her grandchildren and wept over them.

When the old lady had finished weeping over them, she asked, “Where are you going to?” and Tāwhaki answered,

“I go to seek my little girl.”

She replied, “But where is she?”

He answered, “Above there, in the skies.”