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Overview

In Gill’s voyage narrative, Rupe is the younger brother of Ina, daughter of Vaitooringa and Ngaetua. Wanting to find his missing sister, he asks a karaurau bird to convey him. Gill calls the bird a linnet. It consents; Rupe enters it and flies over the ocean to the Sacred Isle. Ina recognises a familiar-looking bird on a bush near her dwelling, and it changes into Rupe’s human form.

After a short visit he returns to inform their grieving parents. Their mother and Rupe then enter two obliging birds and fly back carrying cloth and feast gifts for Ina and her children, Koro and Ature. They spend three days together before returning home. The account describes consenting birds and persons entering them; it does not identify a modern bird species. It is separately attributed from Grey’s Māori Rupe narrative, where pigeon form and the search for Hinauri have their own setting and sequence.

Consenting bird conveyanceEntry into bird bodyHuman-form reunion
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Origins & earliest records

William Wyatt Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (London: Henry S. King, 1876), VI: Ina’s Voyage to the Sacred Isle, pp. 94–95. The individual prose narrator is not named in these sections.

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Records & interpretation

Complete selected prose read in digitized primary OCR; publication and printed page headings checked. Illustration pixels not inspected.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    Myths and Songs from the South Pacific: VI: Ina’s Voyage to the Sacred Isle, pp. 94–95

    William Wyatt Gill, collector and translator · 1876

    Direct historical collected witness; translation and collector interpretations remain attributed.

Family & connections

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References

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  1. Primary collected textGill 1876, VI: Ina’s Voyage to the Sacred Isle, pp. 94–95Research access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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