Koroti

"Chirrup." Koroti ("Chirrup") and Nuku ("Distance") were two priests, who were journeying together from Taranaki to Waikato. When passing through the Hunua forest, Chirrup made a pun about "distance," and Distance a pun upon "chirrup"; these jokes were taken as curses of the kind called tapa-tapa. The men grew so angry that each called on his god to interfere, and the gods, annoyed with the foolish quarrel, turned one into a rimu tree, the other into a matai tree, and their dog into a mound of earth.

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