PICCANINNIES

BY

ISABEL MAUD PEACOCKE

Author of "Songs of the Happy Isles." "My Friend Phil." "Robin of the Round House." "The Bonny Books of Humorous Verse," etc.

Illustrated by

TREVOR LLOYD

WHITCOMBE & TOMBS LIMITED
Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington, N.Z.
Melbourne and London

DEDICATED
TO
MY LITTLE GOD-DAUGHTER
JOAN LUSK
TE KUITI, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

CONTENTS

f your heart is pure, and your eyes are clear,
And you come the one right day of the year,
And eat of the fruit of the Magic Tree
The wee Bush Folk you will surely see.

In the green and woody places,
Thickets shady, sunlit spaces,
Have you never heard us calling,
When the golden eve is falling—
When the noon-day sun is beaming—
When the silver moon is gleaming?
Have you never seen us dancing—
Through the mossy tree-boles glancing?
Have you never caught us gliding
Through the tall ferns? laughing—hiding?
We are here, we are there—
We are everywhere;
Swinging on the tree tops, floating in the air;
Hush! Hush! Hush!
Creep into the Bush,
You will find us everywhere.

f you would see,
First bathe your eyes,
In dew that lies
On the bracken tree.

If you would hear
Our elfin mirth
To Mother Earth
Lay down your ear.

A-many have come with their bright eyes clear,
And their young hearts pure, but—alas! Oh dear!
They've made a mistake in the day of the year.

Piccaninnies

I.

CHRISTMAS TREE. (Pohutukawa).

ong ago the Piccaninnies didn't have a rag to their backs except a huia feather which they wore in their hair. They were the jolliest, tubbiest, brownest babies you ever saw with tiny nubbly knobs on their shoulders, as if they had started to grow wings and then changed their minds about it, and little furry pointed ears, as all wild creatures have. Only these were not wild, but very, very shy.

Where did they live? Oh, just anywhere—all about; among the fern, in the long grass, down on the sands, in all the places babies love to roll about in.

And then People began to come about, so tiresome! They began to make houses, sell things in shops, tear about in big boxes on wheels, and send great, clattering, shrieking, puffing monsters rushing through the country, dropping smoke and cinders like anything. There was such a clatter and a chatter, such gabbling and babbling, such hammering and banging and laughing and crying, and hurry and scurry and rush that it was enough to drive one crazy. There was such a fuss, the Piccaninnies simply couldn't stand it, and they fled to the Bush. Well, wouldn't you, with all that going on?

And there they lived a long time. What fun they had swinging on the giant fern leaves, climbing the trees, chasing the fantails, riding the kiwis, who are very good-natured, though shy, and teasing the great, sleepy round-eyed morepork, who is so stupid and owlish in the daytime.

And then People came into the Bush! Did you ever!

The Piccaninnies took to the trees altogether then, and no wonder!

II.

And then one day some one in a picnic party left a scrap of paper blowing about—you know the horrid way picnic parties have!—and a Piccaninny found it.

"To be sure they were looking at the pictures upside down, but that made no real difference."

As luck would have it, it was a girl Piccaninny; had it been a boy he would simply have torn it up and made paper darts with it to throw at the other boys, and no harm would have been done. But girls are different!

"Teasing the great, sleepy, round-eyed morepork."

She smoothed it out and looked at it carefully, and then she called the other girls