Maui now felt it was necessary to leave the village where Irawaru had lived, so he returned to his parents, and when he had been with them for some time, his father said to him,
A woodcarving of the fearsome face of Maui
“Oh, my son, I have heard from your mother and others that you are very valiant, and that you have succeeded in all feat that you have undertaken in your own country, whether they were small or great”.
“But, now you have arrived in your father’s country, you will, perhaps, at last, be overcome”.
Then Maui asked him, “What do you mean?”. “What things are there that I can be vanquished by?”.
His father answered, “ By your great ancestress, by Hine-nui-te-po, who, if you look. You may see flashing and as it were, opening and shutting there. Where the horizon meets the sky”.
[Hine-nui-te-po]
Maui replied, “Lay aside such idle thoughts, and let us both fearlessly seek whether men are to die or live forever”.
His Father said, “My child, there has been an ill omen for us, when I was baptizing you, I omitted a portion of the fitting prayers, and that I know will be the cause of your perishing.”
Then Maui asked his father, “What in my ancestress Hine-nui-te-po like?”.
His father replied, “ What you see yonder shining so brightly red are her eyes, and her teeth are as sharp and hard as pieces of Jasperc glass, her body is like that of a man, and, as for the pupils of her eyes, they are jasper, and her hair is like tangles of long seaweed, and her mouth is like that of a barracouta”.
Then his son answered him, “Do you think her strength is as great as that of Tama-nui-te-Ra, who consumes man, and earth, and the very waters, by the fierceness of his heat?”
“Was not the world formerly saved alive by the speed with which he travelled?”.
“If he had then, in the days of his full strength and power, gone as slow as he does now, not a remnant of mankind would have been left living upon the earth, nor indeed would anything else have survived”.
“But I laid hold of Tama-nui-te-Ra, and now he goes slowly for I smote again and again, so that now he feeble, and long in travelling his course, and he now gives but very little heat, having been weakened by the blows of my enchanted weapon”.
“I then, too, split him open in many places, and from the wounds so made, many rays now issue forth, and spread in all directions”.
“So, also, I found the sea much larger that the earth, but by the power of the last born of your children, part of the earth was drawn up again, and dry land came forth”.
His father replied, “ That is all very true, O, my last born, and the strength of my old age”.
“Well then, be bold, go and visit your great ancestress who flashes do fiercely there, where the edge of the horizon meets the sky”.
Hardly was this conversation concluded with his father, when the young here went forth to look for companions to accompany him upon this enterprise, and so there cane to him for companions, the small robin, and the large robin, and the thrush, and the yellow hammer, and every kind of little bird, and the fantail.
These all assembled together, and they all started with Maui in the evening, and arrived at the dwelling if Hine-nui-te-po, and found her fast asleep.
Then Maui addressed them all, and said, “My little friends, now if you see me creep into this old chieftainess, do not laugh at what you see. Nay, Nay, do not I pray you, but when I have got completely inside her, and just as I am coming out of her mouth, then you may shout with laughter if you please”.
His little friends, who were frightened at what they saw, replied, “Oh, sir, you will be certainly be killed”.
He answered them “If you burst out laughing at me as soon as I get inside her, you will wake her up, and she will certainly kill me at once, but if you do not laugh until I am quite inside her and am on the point of coming out of her mouth, I shall live, and Hine-nui-te-po will die”.
His little friends answered, “Go on then brave sir, but pray take good care of yourself”.
Then the young hero started off, and twisted the strings of his weapon tight around his wrist, and went into the house, and stripped off his clothes, and the skin on his hips looked mottled and beautiful as that of a mackerel, from the tattoo marks, cut on it with the chisel of Uetonga, and he entered the old chieftainess.
The little birds now screwed up their tiny cheeks, trying to supress their laughter, at last, the little Tiwakawaka, the fantail, could no longer keep it in, and laughed out loud, with its merry cheerful note.
This woke the old woman up, she opened her eyes, started up, and killed Maui.
Thus died this Maui was have spoken of, but before he died he had children, and sons were born to him. Some of his descendants yet live in Hawaiki, some in Aotearoa,
[these islands], the greater part of his descendants remained in Hawaiki, but a few of them came to Aotearoa.
According to the traditions of the Maori this was the cause of the introduction of death into the world [Hine-nui-te-po being the goddess of death, if Maui had passed safely through her, then no more human beings would have been destroyed] and we express it by saying, “The water-wagtail [fantail] laughing at Maui-tiki tiki-a-Taranga made Hine-nui-te-po squeeze him to death”.
We also have this proverb, “Men make heirs, but death carries them off”.
Thus ends the deeds of the son of Makea-tu-tara and of Taranga, and the deeds of the sons of Rangi-nui and of Papa-tu-a-Nuku.
Footnotes:
If a child was born before its time, and thus perished without having known the joys and pleasures of life, it was carefully buried with peculiar incantations and ceremonies, because if cast into the water, or carelessly thrown aside. it became a malicious being or spirit, actuated by a peculiar antipathy to the human race, who it spitefully persecuted, from having been itself deprived of happiness which they enjoyed,
All their malicious deities had an origin of this kind.
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/myths-and-legends-of-new-zealand-intro
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/children-of-heaven-and-earth-part-2
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-this-series-began
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/the-origins-of-maui-how-he-came-home-part-1
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-maui-found-his-mothers-home
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-maui-caught-the-sun-part-1
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/one-result-of-maui-catching-the-sun
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-maui-got-the-jaw-bone-of-his-ancestor
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-maui-fished-up-the-north-island-of-new-zealand
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-maui-brought-fire-to-the-world
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-maui-found-his-sister
https://steemit.com/history/@len.george/how-maui-made-dogs
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