Wouters.—Mythology and Traditions of the Maori. 113 
“that is death right out.’’ ‘ But you are alive.” ‘‘O yes; one can live 
through it, but it is as bad as death.’’ However, it was at last agreed that 
it should be done. The instruments were sharpened and the pigment got 
ready. Then he was laid down, and the operation commenced. It was 
long and painful, and he often fainted. When his breath returned, he 
could only faintly say, “‘O, Taka; O, Ha! I am very bad.” Then the 
operator would reply, ‘It is not I, it is the instrument that causes the 
pain.”” However, after many days of painful operation, the work was at 
last finished. Then he was carried into the house, and laid before the fire. © 
After two or three days he felt better. Then the sores began to fall off, 
and by and by he found himself having been made a handsome man. He 
went torthe water and bathed, but his tatoo did not wash off. After some 
time he said to his ancestors, ‘‘Now I want to go back to my children.” 
Then they gave him some presents, consisting of rotu, puairuru, and 
pokeka-kiekie. The rotu is described as a flower, or the extract of a flower, 
of great virtue. May the name of the lotus flower have been carried by 
the Maori ancestors even so far as New Zealand ? 
Tama came safely back to his children. He stayed with them a short 
time, and then one morning he told them that they must again stay quietly 
at home, and that he would go and try and find their mother. Then he 
disguised his newly acquired beauty with dirt and ashes, and made himself 
look like a mean man. He armed himself with a maipi (a long weapon, 
having at the point a defiant tongue carved), and a sharp flint; he took 
also some of the sweet odours with him. So he started on his fresh 
adventure, repeating an invocation, to counteract the spell which Tutekoro- 
panga had laid on his way. It was a prayer that the mountains and other 
obstacles might move aside to afford him a passage. By and by he came 
to a large forest full of impenetrable thorns and brambles and other 
obstacles ; but he bent the thorns and brambles with his maipi, and then 
cut their strained parts with his sharp flint, and so forced his way through. 
At last, after a great deal of tiresome labour, he arrived on open ground, 
and, when near Tutekoropanga’s place, he fell in with a company of people 
who were breaking firewood. When they saw him, and taking him for a 
straying poor man, they called out, ‘‘ There is a slave for us!” ‘Don’t, 
don’t,’ said Tama. And looking so tired and miserable, the people said, 
‘No, we will not load him with firewood.’’ Then, keeping to them, the 
people told him that they were getting firewood, in order to make bright 
fires in the evening, for Rukutia, the wife of Tama, whom Tutekoropanga 
had taken away from him, was to dance before them, and they wished to 
light the house up with bright fires, so that Rukutia could display the 
features of her face (her grinning) to the best of advantage. 
