59 
The Warblers: The Grey Warbler 
the forest, was captured by a kindly ogre-woman. She took 
him away and kept him prisoner in a cave, where she also kept, 
as pets, all kinds of birds. She treated him well, bringing to 
him all the best of foods as he desired them; but he tired of 
confinement, and longing for liberty, determined to escape. 
On her one day asking him where he wished her to go to 
procure food for him, he indicated a range of hills a great 
distance away, thinking that she would be away so long that 
he would have ample time to escape. She went; he closed up 
all crevices, so that no bird might escape to warn her; he 
ungratefully broke the cages in which she kept her birds, and 
killed many of these before leaving the cave. But a tiny 
riroriro escaped, and flew off to the woman, whose name was 
Kurangai-tuku, crying to her as it flew, “ Kurangai-tuku; 
Kurangai-tuku; -e- ka riro a taua hang a! riro, vivo, riro!” (Our 
property is escaped; gone, gone, gone!) from whence the bird 
was called riroriro. The woman possessed a substitute for seven- 
league-boots, and muttering a charm, “Stretch out, stride along; 
stretch out, stride along, 7 ’ she was able to stride from hill to hill, 
and soon overtook the guilty fleeing Hau-tupatu, but he, by 
murmuring a charm also, escaped the punishment he deserved. 
This tale almost suggests that the young cuckoo and Hau- 
tupatu are one and the same. For the riroriro is one of the 
chief foster-parents of the New Zealand cuckoo—a bird 
ridiculously large to be reared by so tiny a creature. Now the 
young cuckoo does not require feeding as long as the young 
riroriro, so it happens that on a day the bird comes to the nest 
with food, and finds the chick gone. In distress it cries riro, 
riro, riro, —gone, gone, gone,—and so on over and over and over. 
According to the position in which the nest was built, the Maori 
was able to foretell the weather; if the nest were hung high, it 
would be a calm season, rough if hung low in sheltered branches. 
The opening would be turned away from the direction of what 
was to be the prevailing wind. 
The tom-tits of the two islands of New Zealand differ in 
coloration, the North Island species being white-breasted, the 
South Island species yellow-breasted. 
