Part One opens a new shelf: the Māori tales of Aotearoa, heard in the English of two great nineteenth-century collections — a maiden who swims a lake at night, guided only by a flute; a man who learns the stitch of net-making by hauling with the fairies until dawn; a chief whose visitors go away content with the shadows of his jewels; the one hundred and forty sick men revived with warm water; and the father who rode a whale and flew on borrowed birds to bring the kumara home.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In this part:
- Hine-Moa, the Maiden of Rotorua — Tutanekai plays his horn and flute from the balcony on Mokoia island, and Hine-Moa, whose family keeps every canoe hauled up on the shore, swims Lake Rotorua in the dark with six gourds for floats, steering by the music alone.
- Kahukura and the Fairies — on the shore at Rangiaowhia, Kahukura hauls the fairies' mackerel net beside them all night, and delays them past sunrise with a slip-knot that will not hold, until the abandoned net teaches his people the stitch.
- Te Kanawa's Adventures with the Fairies — a fairy troop crowds round the hunters' fire on Puke-more to look at the handsome chief; he offers them his carved jasper ornaments, and they take the shadows only, and vanish content.
- The Sick Cured — the one hundred and forty men of Pou-heni lie on the coast with their teeth set fast, dying of want, until warm water, poured between pried-open teeth, revives them and they rise and join the party.
- Pou-ranga-hua and Kahu-kura — told twice over: a father whose baby has rejected the kaha-wai liver follows his stolen canoe in one made of a duck's feather, rides a whale, and plants the two kumara roots; and again, flying to Hawa-iki on two borrowed pet birds to bring back seven varieties of kumara.
The tales:
01:58 — Hine-Moa, the Maiden of Rotorua
20:08 — Kahukura and the Fairies
26:33 — Te Kanawa's Adventures with the Fairies
32:13 — The Sick Cured
34:10 — Pou-ranga-hua and Kahu-kura
Source and rights: Māori tales from John White's Ancient History of the Maori (1887–90) and Sir George Grey's Polynesian Mythology (1855). The three Grey tales and the two White tellings are read from the public-domain English texts of those books, lightly cleaned of scan noise; Grey died in 1898 and White in 1891. Screened for this part and not read: the rest of Grey's collection stands parked or set aside by class — the Rangi and Papa cosmogony, the Maui, Tawhaki and Rupe cycles, the murder and revenge tales, the war and voyage cycle, and the sorcery tales; White's Kahu-ngunu and Rongo-mai-wahine cycle stands held, and his remaining volumes are set aside under this shelf's content screen. No completeness for either work is claimed; this part is the five tellings named above.
Narrated by Magnolia.
Music: Lightning Crash — opening and closing theme, with a short instrumental separator between stories, and no music under the narration.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
