The Art Of Netting Learned From The Fairies

len.george (63)in #history • 6 years ago

Once upon a time, a man of the name of Kahukura wished to pay a visit to Rangiaowhia, a place lying far to the Northward, near the country of a tribe called Te Rarawa.

Whilst he lived at his own village, he was continually haunted by a desire to visit that place.

At length he started on his journey, and reached Rangiaowhia, and, as he was on his road, he passed a place where some people had been cleaning mackerel. And he saw the insides of the fish lying all about the sand on the seashore.

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Surprised at this, he looked about at the marks, and said to himself, “Oh, this must have been done by the people of the district”.

But when he looked more narrowly at the footmarks, he saw that the people who had been fishing had made them in the night time, not that morning, nor in the day.

Then he said to himself, “There are no mortals who have been fishing here, spirits must have done this, had they been men, some of the reeds and grass which they sat their canoes on would be laying about”

He felt quite sure from several circumstances, that spirits or fairies had been there, and after observing everything well, he returned to the house where he was stopping.

He, however, held fast in his heart what he had seen, as something striking to tell all his friends in every direction, and as likely to be the means of gaining knowledge which might enable him to find out something new.

So that night he returned to the place where he had observed all those things, and just as he reached the spot, back came the fairies too.

They had come to haul their net for mackerel, and some of them were shouting out, “The net here, the net here”.

Then a canoe paddled off to fetch the other in which the net was laid, and as they dropped the net into the water, they began to cry out, “Drop the net in the sea at Rangiowhia, and haul it at Mamaku”.

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These words were sung out by the fairies, as an encouragement in their work and from the joy of their hearts at their sport of fishing.

As the fairies were dragging the net to the shore, Kahukura managed to mix amongst them and hauled away at the rope, he happened to be a very fair man, so that his skin was almost as white as these fairies, and from that cause, he was not discovered by them.

As the net came close to the shore, the fairies began to cheer and shout, “Go out onto the sea some of you, in front of the rocks. Lest the nets should be entangled at Tawatawauia by Teweteweuia”,

For that was the name of a rugged rock standing out from the sandy shore.

The main body of the fairies kept hauling at the net, and Kahukura pulled away in the midst of them.

When the first fish reached the shore, thrown up in ripple driven by the net as they hauled it in, the fairies had not yet remarked Kahukura, for he was almost as fair as they were.

It was just at the very first peep of dawn that the fish were all landed, and the fairies ran hastily to pick them up from the sand, and to haul the net up on the beach.

They did not act with their fish the same as men do, dividing them into separate loads for each, but everybody took up what fish he liked, and ran a twig through their gills, and as they strung the fish, they continued calling out, “Make haste, make haste, run here all of you, and finish the work before the sun rises”.

Kahukura kept on stringing his fish with the rest of them.

He only had a very short string, and, making a slip knot at the end of it, when he had covered the string with fish, he lifted them up, but he had hardly raised them from the ground when the slip knot gave way from the height of the fish, and they all fell off again.

Then, some of the fairies ran good naturedly, to help him to string his fish again, and one of them tied the knot at the end of the string for him.

But the fairy had hardly gone after knotting it before Kahukura had unfastened it, and again tied a slip knot at the end.

Then he began stringing his fish again, and when he had got a great many on, up he lifted them, and off they slipped as before.

This trick he repeated several times, and delayed the fairies in their work, by getting them to knot his string for him, and put his fish on it.

At last, full daylight broke, so there was light enough to distinguish a man’s face, and the fairies saw that Kahukura was a man.

Then they dispersed in confusion, leaving their fish and their nets, and abandoning their canoes, which were nothing but stems from the flax.

In a moment the fairies started for their own abodes, in their hurry the abandoned their nets, which were made of rushes, and off the good people rushed as fast as they could go.

Now was discovered the stitch for netting a net, for they left theirs with Kahukura, and it became a pattern for him.