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Ponaturi


In Māori mythology, the Ponaturi are a group of hostile creatures (goblins) who live in a land beneath the sea by day, returning to shore each evening to sleep. They dread daylight, which is fatal to them. They appear in a number of stories, including:

The kanae (or grey mullet) is represented as a companion of the Ponaturi in another version of Tāwhaki (Grey 1956:51). When the Ponaturi come up out of the water to their house Manawa-Tāne, Kanae comes with them. Tāwhaki and Karihi kill all the Ponaturi, in revenge for the death of Hemā, but the mullet escapes by leaping again and again until it gets back to the sea (Craig 1989:99, Grey 1855:40, Tregear 1891:122).

In the story of Ruapupuke (or Rua-te-pupuke), the kanae is associated with similar creatures, the horde of Tangaroa, which are not overtly named as Ponaturi:


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