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The surface of Mercury
These two stories from Aotearoa New Zealand offer other accounts of how some important stars and constellations came to be.
The pūrākau are short enough for students to read themselves or to be read out to the class.
You and your students may be familiar with other versions of these pūrākau. The ones here were written specifically for this resource, and you are welcome to print them off for classroom use.
 The adornment of Ranginu
According to the old people, after the separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku, the task of adorning his parents was given to Tane.
He asked his brother Kewa to go to Maunganui to get the harbingers of light, so they might be placed on the belly of Ranginui. These children of light lived with their parents in Maunganui. When Kewa arrived he asked Tongatonga, one of the guardians, for the Whanau Ariki, to adorn Ranginui.
Tongatonga agreed and they both climbed the hill to Te Rehuroa. There they saw the children of light, who were round and looked like an eye, rolling up the hill and into the house known as Rangitukia, where the guardians placed them in four baskets.
The first basket was called Te Raururangi and contained the Sun. The second basket, Te Kauhanga, contained the Moon. The third basket contained Canopus and a few other stars. The fourth basket, Rauroha, contained the stars that are spread right across the heavens. These stars were called the Whānau Punga, or the stars under the Milky Way, and were placed in Tamarereti's canoe Uruao. The Milky Way and Tamarereti were charged with looking after these stars.
 tAKERO (mERCURY)
Takero (the planet Mercury) is well known to the people of the Mātātua canoe.
According to the old stories, a quarrel occurred amongst the star multitude, the children of Tangotango. During the quarrel, the scales of Takero (ngā unahi o Takero) fell down and became the stars of Korotakataka, known as 'the heaped up pile' within the Milky Way.
Some also say that autumn, when Takero is visible in our night skies, is the time of the last migration of the small fish pahore (the parent fish of whitebait) to the sea. |
