The wood so softly singing
In a language strange to hear
And the song it sings will find you
As the twilight draws you near

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The Enchanted Stick



Here is a Maori tale from New Zealand:


In a certain part of the forest there are beings that have always inhabited it and remain there still, though they are rarely seen. Those that live in the forest and who are familiar with its secrets can sometimes hear them singing at night. There is a special fruit that they eat and if humans go to gather some of that fruit invocations must be made and permission granted to collect it. 
 If a stranger comes into this part of the forest from another area and does not acknowledge them they are displeased. Once a hunter followed a wild pig into the part of the forest where they live and tracked the pig to an open glade where he killed it. But when he tried to leave the forest he could not find his way and then found himself back in the glade where he had killed the pig. He tried again, but was soon lost until, at nightfall,there he was again in the same glade. So he had to spend a frightening night in the forest and although he slept for a little his dreams were troubled. 
As dawn broke he saw a shapely stick on the ground and reached out to pick it up. As he grasped it, it moved and began pulling him along through the trees so that he had to leave the pig behind. 'An offering to the spirits of this place', he found himself thinking. Eventually he came to a track he knew in another part of the forest. The stick disappeared. When he began to make his way home he heard a wavering and plaintive voice calling after him, saying 
 'Go, and do not come again'. 

(Collected in the Nineteenth Century)