Tregear. — Polynesian Folk-lore. 371 



forwards between our dwelling-place and theirs, paying them 

 happy visits.' 



" He answered them, ' It is certainly a very good cause which 

 leads me to undertake this journey, and if, when reaching the 

 place I am going to, I find everything agreeable and nice, then I 

 shall perhaps be pleased with it ; but if I find it a bad dis- 

 agreeable place, I shall be disgusted with it.' They replied to 

 him, ' What you say is exceedingly true, depart then upon your 

 journey, with your great knowledge and skill in magic' Then 

 their brother went into the wood, and came back to them again, 

 looking just as if he were a real pigeon. His brothers were 

 quite delighted, and they had no power left to do anything but 

 admire him. 



" Then off he flew, until he came to the cave which his mother 

 had run down into, and he lifted up the tuft of rushes. Then 

 down he went, and disappeared m the cave, and shut up its 

 mouth again so as to hide the entrance. Away he flew very 

 fast indeed, and twice he dipped his wing, because the cave was 

 so narrow. Soon he reached nearly to the bottom of the cave, 

 and flew along it ; and again, because the cave was so narrow, 

 he dips first one wing and then the other, but the cave now 

 widened, and he dashed straight on. 



" At last he saw a party of people coming along under a grove 

 of trees ; they were manapau trees,* and flying on, he perched 

 upon the top of one of these trees, under which the people had 

 seated themselves ; and when he saw his mother lying down 

 upon the grass by the side of her husband, he guessed at once 

 who they were, and he thought, ' Ah, there sit my father and 

 mother right under me,' and he soon heard their names as 

 they were called to by their friends, who were sitting with them. 

 Then the pigeon hopped down, and perched on another spray a 

 little lower, and it pecked off one of the berries off the tree and 

 dropped it gently down, and hit the father with it gently on the 

 forehead ; and some of the party said, ' Was it a bird that 

 threw that down '?' but the father said, ' Oh no, it was only a 

 berry that fell by chance.' Then the pigeon again pecked off 

 some of the berries from the tree, and threw them down with 

 all its force, and struck both father and mother so that he really 

 hurt them. Then they cried out, and the whole party jumped 

 up and looked into the tree, and as the pigeon began to coo, 

 they soon found out from the noise where it was sitting among 

 the leaves and branches, and the whole of them, the chiefs and 

 common people alike, caught up stones to pelt the pigeon with, 

 but they threw for a very long time without hitting it. At last 

 the father tried to throw up at it. Ah ! he struck it ; but Maui 



* " The manapau was a species of tree peculiar to the country whence 

 the people came, where the priests say it was known by this name." — Grey. 

 The manapau is a tree of Samoa. — Tregear. 



