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PREFATORY NOTE

Previous to the year 1906 the researches of the Bureau were
restricted to the American Indians, but by act of Congress
approved June 30 of that year the scope of its operations was
extended to include the natives of the Hawaiian islands.
Funds were not specifically provided, however, for
prosecuting investigations among these people, and in the
absence of an appropriation for this purpose it was
considered inadvisable to restrict the systematic
investigations among the Indian tribes in order that the new
field might be entered. Fortunately the publication of
valuable data pertaining to Hawaii is already provided for,
and the present memoir by Doctor Emerson is the first of the
Bureau’s Hawaiian series. It is expected that this Bulletin
will be followed shortly by one comprising an extended list
of works relating to Hawaii, compiled by Prof. H.M. Ballou
and Dr. Cyrus Thomas.

W.H. HOLMES,
Chief.

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CONTENTS

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ILLUSTRATIONS

MUSICAL PIECES

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INTRODUCTION

This book is for the greater part a collection of Hawaiian
songs and poetic pieces that have done service from time
immemorial as the stock supply of the hula. The descriptive
portions have been added, not because the poetical parts
could not stand by themselves, but to furnish the proper
setting and to answer the questions of those who want to
know.

Now, the hula stood for very much to the ancient Hawaiian; it
was to him in place of our concert-hall and lecture-room, our
opera and theater, and thus became one of his chief means of
social enjoyment. Besides this, it kept the communal
imagination in living touch with the nation’s legendary past.
The hula had songs proper to itself, but it found a mine of
inexhaustible wealth in the epics and wonder-myths that
celebrated the doings of the volcano goddess Pele and her
compeers. Thus in the cantillations of the old-time hula we
find a ready-made anthology that includes every species of
composition in the whole range of Hawaiian poetry. This
epic
¹ of Pele was chiefly a more or less detached series of
poems forming a story addressed not to the closet-reader, but
to the eye and ear and heart of the assembled chiefs and
people; and it was sung. The Hawaiian song, its note of joy
par excellence, was the oli; but it must be noted that in
every species of Hawaiian poetry, mele—whether epic or
eulogy or prayer, sounding through them all we shall find the
lyric note.

Footnote 1:
(return) It might be termed a handful of lyrics strung on
an epic thread.

The most telling record of a people’s intimate life is the
record which it unconsciously makes in its songs. This record
which the Hawaiian people have left of themselves is full and
specific. When, therefore, we ask what emotions stirred the
heart of the old-time Hawaiian as he approached the great
themes of life and death, of ambition and jealousy, of sexual
passion, of romantic love, of conjugal love, and parental
love, what his attitude toward nature and the dread forces of
earthquake and storm, and the mysteries of spirit and the
hereafter, we shall find our answer in the songs and prayers
and recitations of the hula.

The hula, it is true, has been unfortunate in the mode and
manner of its introduction to us moderns. An institution of
divine, that is, religious, origin, the hula in modern times
Page 8 has wandered so far and fallen so low that foreign and
critical esteem has come to associate it with the riotous and
passionate ebullitions of Polynesian kings and the amorous
posturing of their voluptuaries. We must make a just
distinction, however, between the gestures and bodily
contortions presented by the men and women, the actors in the
hula, and their uttered words. “The voice is Jacob’s voice,
but the hands are the hands of Esau.” In truth, the actors in
the hula no longer suit the action to the word. The utterance
harks back to the golden age; the gesture is trumped up by
the passion of the hour, or dictated by the master of the
hula, to whom the real meaning of the old bards is ofttimes a
sealed casket.

Whatever indelicacy attaches in modern times to some of the
gestures and contortions of the hula dancers, the old-time
hula songs in large measure were untainted with grossness. If
there ever were a Polynesian Arcadia, and if it were possible
for true reports of the doings and sayings of the Polynesians
to reach us from that happy land—reports of their joys and
sorrows, their love-makings and their jealousies, their
family spats and reconciliations, their worship of beauty and
of the gods and goddesses who walked in the garden of
beauty—we may say, I think, that such a report would be in
substantial agreement with the report that is here offered;
but, if one’s virtue will not endure the love-making of
Arcadia, let him banish the myth from his imagination and hie
to a convent or a nunnery.

If this book does nothing more than prove that savages are
only children of a younger growth than ourselves, that what
we find them to have been we ourselves—in our
ancestors—once were, the labor of making it will have been
not in vain.

For an account of the first hula we may look to the story of
Pele. On one occasion that goddess begged her sisters to
dance and sing before her, but they all excused themselves,
saying they did not know the art. At that moment in came
little Hiiaka, the youngest and the favorite. Unknown to her
sisters, the little maiden had practised the dance under the
tuition of her friend, the beautiful but ill-fated Hopoe.
When banteringly invited to dance, to the surprise of all,
Hiiaka modestly complied. The wave-beaten sand-beach was her
floor, the open air her hall. Feet and hands and swaying form
kept time to her improvisation:

The nature of this work has made it necessary to use
occasional Hawaiian words in the technical parts. At their
Page 9 first introduction it has seemed fitting that they should be
distinguished by italics; but, once given the entrée, it is
assumed that, as a rule, they will be granted the rights of
free speech without further explanation.

A glossary, which explains all the Hawaiian words used in the
prose text, is appended. Let no one imagine, however, that by
the use of this little crutch alone he will be enabled to
walk or stumble through the foreign ways of the simplest
Hawaiian mele. Notes, often copious, have been appended to
many of the mele, designed to exhaust neither the subject nor
the reader, but to answer some of the questions of the
intelligent thinker.

Thanks, many thanks, are due, first, to those native
Hawaiians who have so far broken with the old superstitious
tradition of concealment as to unearth so much of the
unwritten literary wealth stored in Hawaiian memories;
second, to those who have kindly contributed criticism,
suggestion, material at the different stages of this book’s
progress; and, lastly, to those dear friends of the author’s
youth—living or dead—whose kindness has made it possible to
send out this fledgling to the world. The author feels under
special obligations to Dr. Titus Munson Coan, of New York,
for a painstaking revision of the manuscript.

HONOLULU, HAWAII.

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I.—THE HULA

One turns from the study of old genealogies, myths, and
traditions of the Hawaiians with a hungry despair at finding
in them means so small for picturing the people themselves,
their human interests and passions; but when it comes to the
hula and the whole train of feelings and sentiments that made
their entrances and exits in the halau (the hall of the
hula) one perceives that in this he has found the door to the
heart of the people. So intimate and of so simple confidence
are the revelations the people make of themselves in their
songs and prattlings that when one undertakes to report what
he has heard and to translate into the terms of modern speech
what he has received in confidence, as it were, he almost
blushes, as if he had been guilty of spying on Adam and Eve
in their nuptial bower. Alas, if one could but muffle his
speech with the unconscious lisp of infancy, or veil and tone
his picture to correspond to the perspective of antiquity, he
might feel at least that, like Watteau, he had dealt
worthily, if not truly, with that ideal age which we ever
think of as the world’s garden period.

The Hawaiians, it is true, were many removes from being
primitives; their dreams, however, harked back to a period
that was close to the world’s infancy. Their remote ancestry
was, perhaps, akin to ours—Aryan, at least Asiatic—but the
orbit of their evolution seems to have led them away from the
strenuous discipline that has whipped the Anglo-Saxon branch
into fighting shape with fortune.

If one comes to the study of the hula and its songs in the
spirit of a censorious moralist he will find nothing for him;
if as a pure ethnologist, he will take pleasure in pointing
out the physical resemblances of the Hawaiian dance to the
languorous grace of the Nautch girls, of the geisha, and
other oriental dancers. But if he comes as a student and
lover of human nature, back of the sensuous posturings, in
the emotional language of the songs he will find himself
entering the playground of the human race.

The hula was a religious service, in which poetry, music,
pantomime, and the dance lent themselves, under the forms of
Page 12 dramatic art, to the refreshment of men’s minds. Its view of
life was idyllic, and it gave itself to the celebration of
those mythical times when gods and goddesses moved on the
earth as men and women and when men and women were as gods.
As to subject-matter, its warp was spun largely from the
bowels of the old-time mythology into cords through which the
race maintained vital connection with its mysterious past.
Interwoven with these, forming the woof, were threads of a
thousand hues and of many fabrics, representing the
imaginations of the poet, the speculations of the
philosopher, the aspirations of many a thirsty soul, as well
as the ravings and flame-colored pictures of the sensualist,
the mutterings and incantations of the kahuna, the
mysteries and paraphernalia of Polynesian mythology, the
annals of the nation’s history—the material, in fact, which
in another nation and under different circumstances would
have gone to the making of its poetry, its drama, its opera,
its literature.

The people were superstitiously religious; one finds their
drama saturated with religious feeling, hedged about with
tabu, loaded down with prayer and sacrifice. They were
poetical; nature was full of voices for their ears; their
thoughts came to them as images; nature was to them an
allegory; all this found expression in their dramatic art.
They were musical; their drama must needs be cast in forms to
suit their ideas of rhythm, of melody, and of poetic harmony.
They were, moreover, the children of passion, sensuous,
worshipful of whatever lends itself to pleasure. How, then,
could the dramatic efforts of this primitive people, still in
the bonds of animalism, escape the note of passion? The songs
and other poetic pieces which have come down to us from the
remotest antiquity are generally inspired with a purer
sentiment and a loftier purpose than the modern; and it may
be said of them all that when they do step into the mud it is
not to tarry and wallow in it; it is rather with the
unconscious naiveté of a child thinking no evil.

On the principle of “the terminal conversion of opposites,”
which the author once heard an old philosopher expound, the
most advanced modern is better able to hark back to the
sweetness and light and music of the primeval world than the
veriest wigwam-dweller that ever chipped an arrowhead. It is
not so much what the primitive man can give us as what we can
find in him that is worth our while. The light that a Goethe,
a Thoreau, or a Kipling can project into Arcadia is mirrored
in his own nature.

If one mistakes not the temper and mind of this generation,
we are living in an age that is not content to let perish one
seed of thought or one single phase of life that can be
rescued from the drift of time. We mourn the extinction of
the buffalo of the plains and of the birds of the islands,
Page 13 rightly thinking that life is somewhat less rich and full
without them. What of the people of the plains and of the
islands of the sea? Is their contribution so nothingless that
one can affirm that the orbit of man’s mind is complete
without it?

Comparison is unavoidable between the place held by the dance
in ancient Hawaii and that occupied by the dance in our
modern society. The ancient Hawaiians did not personally and
informally indulge in the dance for their own amusement, as
does pleasure-loving society at the present time. Like the
Shah of Persia, but for very different reasons, Hawaiians of
the old time left it to be done for them by a body of trained
and paid performers. This was not because the art and
practice of the hula were held in disrepute—quite the
reverse—but because the hula was an accomplishment requiring
special education and arduous training in both song and
dance, and more especially because it was a religious matter,
to be guarded against profanation by the observance of tabus
and the performance of priestly rites.

This fact, which we find paralleled in every form of communal
amusement, sport, and entertainment in ancient Hawaii, sheds
a strong light on the genius of the Hawaiian. We are wont to
think of the old-time Hawaiians as light-hearted children of
nature, given to spontaneous outbursts of song and dance as
the mood seized them; quite as the rustics of “merrie
England” joined hands and tripped “the light fantastic toe”
in the joyous month of May or shouted the harvest home at a
later season. The genius of the Hawaiian was different. With
him the dance was an affair of premeditation, an organized
effort, guarded by the traditions of a somber religion. And
this characteristic, with qualifications, will be found to
belong to popular Hawaiian sport and amusement of every
variety. Exception must be made, of course, of the
unorganized sports of childhood. One is almost inclined to
generalize and to say that those children of nature, as we
are wont to call them, in this regard were less free and
spontaneous than the more advanced race to which we are proud
to belong. But if the approaches to the temple of Terpsichore
with them were more guarded, we may confidently assert that
their enjoyment therein was deeper and more abandoned.

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II.—THE HALAU; THE KUAHU—THEIR DECORATION
AND CONSECRATION

THE HALAU

In building a halau, or hall, in which to perform the hula a
Hawaiian of the old, old time was making a temple for his
god. In later and degenerate ages almost any structure would
serve the purpose; it might be a flimsy shed or an
extemporaneous lanai such as is used to shelter that al
fresco entertainment, the luau. But in the old times of
strict tabu and rigorous etiquette, when the chief had but to
lift his hand and the entire population of a district
ransacked plain, valley, and mountain to collect the poles,
beams, thatch, and cordstuff; when the workers were so
numerous that the structure grew and took shape in a day, we
may well believe that ambitious and punctilious patrons of
the hula, such as La’a, Liloa, or Lono-i-ka-makahiki, did not
allow the divine art of Laka to house in a barn.

The choice of a site was a matter of prime importance. A
formidable code enunciated the principles governing the
selection. But—a matter of great solicitude—there were
omens to be heeded, snares and pitfalls devised by the
superstitious mind for its own entanglement. The untimely
sneeze, the ophthalmic eye, the hunched back were omens to be
shunned.

Within historic times, since the abrogation of the tabu
system and the loosening of the old polytheistic ideas, there
has been in the hula a lowering of former standards, in some
respects a degeneration. The old gods, however, were not
entirely dethroned; the people of the hula still continued to
maintain the form of divine service and still appealed to
them for good luck; but the soul of worship had exhaled; the
main study now was to make of the hula a pecuniary success.

In an important sense the old way was in sympathy with the
thought, “Except God be with the workmen, they labor in vain
that build the house.” The means for gaining divine favor and
averting the frown of the gods were those practised by all
religionists in the infantile state of the human mind—the
observance of fasts and tabus, the offering of special
prayers and sacrifices. The ceremonial purification of the
site, or of the building if it had been used for profane
purposes, was accomplished by aspersions with sea water mixed
with turmeric or red earth.

Page 15

When one considers the tenacious hold which all rites and
ceremonies growing out of what we are accustomed to call
superstitions had on the mind of the primitive Hawaiian, it
puzzles one to account for the entire dropping out from
modern memory of the prayers which were recited during the
erection of a hall for the shelter of an institution so
festive and so popular as the hula, while the prayers and
gloomy ritual of the temple service have survived. The
explanation may be found, perhaps, in the fact that the
priests of the temple held position by the sovereign’s
appointment; they formed a hierarchy by themselves, whereas
the position of the kumu-hula, who was also a priest, was
open to anyone who fitted himself for it by training and
study and by passing successfully the ai-lolo
² ordeal.
After that he had the right to approach the altar of the hula
god with the prescribed offerings and to present the prayers
and petitions of the company to Laka or Kapo.

Footnote 2:
(return) Ai-lolo. See pp. 32, 34, 36.

In pleasing contrast to the worship of the heiau, the
service of the hula was not marred by the presence of
groaning victims and bloody sacrifices. Instead we find the
offerings to have been mostly rustic tokens, things entirely
consistent with light-heartedness, joy, and ecstasy of
devotion, as if to celebrate the fact that heaven had come
down to earth and Pan, with all the nymphs, was dancing.

During the time the halau was building the tabus and rules
that regulated conduct were enforced with the utmost
strictness. The members of the company were required to
maintain the greatest propriety of demeanor, to suppress all
rudeness of speech and manner, to abstain from all carnal
indulgence, to deny themselves specified articles of food,
and above all to avoid contact with a corpse. If anyone, even
by accident, suffered such defilement, before being received
again into fellowship or permitted to enter the halau and
take part in the exercises he must have ceremonial cleansing
(huikala). The kumu offered up prayers, sprinkled the
offender with salt water and turmeric, commanded him to bathe
in the ocean, and he was clean. If the breach of discipline
was gross and willful, an act of outrageous violence or the
neglect of tabu, the offender could be restored only after
penitence and confession.

THE KUAHU

In every halau stood the kuahu, or altar, as the visible
temporary abode of the deity, whose presence was at once the
inspiration of the performance and the luck-bringer of the
enterprise—a rustic frame embowered in greenery. The
gathering of the green leaves and other sweet finery of
Page 16 nature for its construction and decoration was a matter of so
great importance that it could not be intrusted to any chance
assemblage of wild youth who might see fit to take the work
in hand. There were formalities that must be observed, songs
to be chanted, prayers to be recited. It was necessary to
bear in mind that when one deflowered the woods of their
fronds of íe-íe and fern or tore the trailing lengths of
maile—albeit in honor of Laka herself—the body of the
goddess was being despoiled, and the despoiling must be done
with all tactful grace and etiquette.

It must not be gathered from this that the occasion was made
solemn and oppressive with weight of ceremony, as when a
temple was erected or as when a tabu chief walked abroad, and
all men lay with their mouths in the dust. On the contrary,
it was a time of joy and decorous exultation, a time when in
prayer-songs and ascriptions of praise the poet ransacked all
nature for figures and allusions to be used in caressing the
deity.

The following adulatory prayer (kánaenáe) in adoration of
Laka was recited while gathering the woodland decorations for
the altar. It is worthy of preservation for its intrinsic
beauty, for the spirit of trustfulness it breathes. We remark
the petitions it utters for the growth of tree and shrub, as
if Laka had been the alma mater under whose influence all
nature budded and rejoiced.

It would seem as if the physical ecstasy of the dance and the
sensuous joy of all nature’s finery had breathed their spirit
into the aspiration and that the beauty of leaf and flower,
all of them familiar forms of the god’s
metamorphosis—accessible to their touch and for the
regalement of their senses—had brought such nearness and
dearness, of affection between goddess and worshiper that all
fear was removed.

He kánaenáe no Laka

Footnote 3:
(return) Wao-kele. That portion of the mountain forest
where grew the monarch trees was called wao-kele or
wao-maukele.

Footnote 4:
(return) Na Kane. Why was the offering, the black roast
porkling, said to be for Kane, who was not a special patron,
au-makúa, of the hula? The only answer the author has been
able to obtain from any Hawaiian is that, though Kane was not
a god of the hula, he was a near relative. On reflection, the
author can see a propriety in devoting the reeking flesh of
the swine to god Kane, while to the sylvan deity, Lâkâ,
goddess of the peaceful hula, were devoted the rustic
offerings that were the embodiment of her charms. Her image,
or token—an uncarved block of wood—was set up in a
prominent part of the kuahu, and at the close of a
performance the wreaths that had been worn by the actors were
draped about the image. Thus viewed, there is a delicate
propriety and significance in such disposal of the pig.

Footnote 5:
(return) Maka-li’i (Small eyes). The Pleiades; also the
period of six months, including the rainy season, that began
some time in October or November and was reckoned from the
date when the Pleiades appeared in the East at sunset.
Maka-li’i was also the name of a month, by some reckoned as
the first month of the year.

Footnote 6:
(return) Maka-léi. The name of a famous mythological
tree which had the power of attracting fish. It did not
poison, but only bewitched or fascinated them. There were two
trees bearing this name, one a male, the other a female,
which both grew at a place in Hilo called Pali-uli. One of
these, the female, was, according to tradition, carried from
its root home to the fish ponds in Kailua, Oahu, for the
purpose of attracting fish to the neighboring waters. The
enterprise was eminently successful.

Footnote 7:
(return) Po. Literally night; the period in cosmogony
when darkness and chaos reigned, before the affairs on earth
had become settled under the rule of the gods. Here the word
is used to indicate a period of remote mythologic antiquity.
The use of the word Po in the following verse reminds one
of the French adage, “La nuit porte conseil.”

Footnote 8:
(return) Kokúa. Another form for kakúa, to gird on
the pa-ú. (See Pa-ú song, pp. 51-53.)

Footnote 9:
(return) Uníki. A word not given in the dictionary. The
debut of an actor at the hula, after passing the ai-lolo
test and graduating from the school of the halau, a critical
event.

Footnote 10:
(return) Ha-íke-íke. Equivalent to ho-íke-íke, an
exhibition, to exhibit.

Footnote 11:
(return) Ou-alii. The Hawaiians seem to have lost the
meaning of this word. The author has been at some pains to
work it out somewhat conjecturally.

Footnote 12:
(return) E Lono, e hu’ ia, mai, etc. The unelided form
of the word hu’ would be hui. The final i is dropped
before the similar vowel of ia.

Footnote 13:
(return) Kukúlu o Kahíki. The pillars of Kahiki. The
ancient Hawaiians supposed the starry heavens to be a solid
dome supported by a wall or vertical
construction—kukulu—set up along the horizon. That
section of the wall that stood over against Kahiki they
termed Kukulu o Kahiki. Our geographical name Tahiti is of
course from Kahiki, though it does not apply to the same
region. After the close of what has been termed “the period
of intercourse,” which, came probably during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and during which the ancient Hawaiians
voyaged to and fro between Hawaii and the lands of the South,
geographical ideas became hazy and the term Kahiki came to
be applied to any foreign country.

Footnote 14:
(return) Áno-ái. An old form of salutation, answering
in general to the more modern word aloha, much used at the
present time. Ano-ai seems to have had a shade of meaning
more nearly answering to our word “welcome.” This is the
first instance the author has met with of its use in poetry.

Page 18

[Translation.]

A Prayer of Adulation to Laka

The cult of god Lono was milder, more humane, than that of
Kane and the other major gods. No human sacrifices were
offered on his altars.—The statement in verse 26 accords
with the general belief of the Hawaiians that Lono dwelt in
foreign parts, Kukulu o Kahiki, and that he would some time
come to them from across the waters. When Captain Cook
arrived in his ships, the Hawaiians worshiped him as the god
Lono.

The following song-prayer also is one that was used at the
gathering of the greenery in the mountains and during the
building of the altar in the halau. When recited in the halau
all the pupils took part, and the chorus was a response in
which the whole assembly in the halau were expected to join:

Pule Kuahu no Laka

[Translation.]

Altar-Prayer to Laka

Footnote 15:
(return) Hoo-ulu. This word has a considerable range of
meaning, well illustrated in this mele. In its simplest form,
ulu, it means to grow, to become strong. Joined with the
causative hoo, as here, it takes on the spiritual meaning
of causing to prosper, of inspiring. The word “collect,” used
in the translation, has been chosen to express the double
sense of gathering the garlands and of devoting them to the
goddess as a religious offering. In the fourth verse this
word, hooulu, is used in the sense of to heal. Compare note
c.

Footnote 16:
(return) Hiiaka. The youngest sister of Pele, often
spoken of as Hiiaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele,
Hiiaka-of-the-bosom-of-Pele. Why she should be spoken of as
capable of healing diseases is not at all clear.

Footnote 17:
(return) Ulu. Here we have the word ulu in its
simple, uncombined form, meaning to enter into and inspire.

The wildwoods of Hawaii furnished in great abundance and
variety small poles for the framework of the kuahu, the
altar, the holy place of the halau, and sweet-scented leaves
and flowers suitable for its decoration. A spirit of fitness,
however, limited choice among these to certain species that
were deemed acceptable to the goddess because they were
reckoned as among her favorite forms of metamorphosis. To go
outside this ordained and traditional range would have been
an offense, a sacrilege. This critical spirit would have
looked with the greatest disfavor on the practice that in
modern times has crept in, of bedecking the dancers with
garlands of roses, pinks, jessamine, and other nonindigenous
flowers, as being utterly repugnant to the traditional spirit
of the hula.

Among decorations approved and most highly esteemed stood
pre-eminent the fragrant maile (pl. IV) and the star-like
fronds and ruddy drupe of the íe-íe (pl. II) and its
kindred, the hála-pépe (pl. III); the scarlet pompons of
the lehúa (pl. XIII) and ohi’a, with the fruit of the
latter (the mountain-apple); many varieties of fern,
including that splendid parasite, the “bird’s nest fern”
Page 20 (ekáha), hailed by the Hawaiians as Mawi’s paddle; to which
must be added the commoner leaves and lemon-colored flowers
of the native hibiscus, the hau, the breadfruit, the native
banana and the dracæna (ti), plate V; and lastly, richest
of all, in the color that became Hawaii’s favorite, the royal
yellow ilíma (pl. VI), a flower familiar to the eyes of the
tourist to Honolulu.

While deft hands are building and weaving the light framework
of the kuahu, binding its parts with strong vines and
decorating it with nature’s sumptuous embroidery, the kumu,
or teacher, under the inspiration of the deity, for whose
residence he has prepared himself by long vigil and fasting
with fleshly abstinence, having spent the previous night
alone in the halau, is chanting or cantillating his adulatory
prayers, kanaenae—songs of praise they seem to be—to the
glorification of the gods and goddesses who are invited to
bless the occasion with their presence and inspiration, but
especially of that one, Laka, whose bodily presence is
symbolized by a rude block of wood arrayed in yellow tapa
that is set up on the altar itself. Thus does the kumu sing:

Pule Kuahu

[Translation.]

Altar-Prayer (to Laka)

Footnote 18:
(return) Ilio nana e hae. The barking of a dog, the
crowing of a cock, the grunting of a pig, the hooting of an
owl, or any such sound occurring at the time of a religious
solemnity, aha, broke the spell of the incantation and
vitiated the ceremony. Such an untimely accident was as much
deprecated as were the Turk, the Comet, and the Devil by
pious Christian souls during the Middle Ages.

Footnote 19:
(return) Lau-ki. The leaf of the ti plant—the
same as the ki—(Dracæna terminalis), much used as an emblem
of divine power, a charm or defense against malign spiritual
influences. The kahuna often wore about his neck a fillet of
this leaf. The ti leaf was a special emblem of Ha’i-wahine,
or of Li’a-wahine. It was much used as a decoration about the
halau.

Footnote 20:
(return) Ha’i-ka-manawa. It is conjectured that this is
the same as Ha’i-wahine. She was a mythological character,
about whom there is a long and tragic story.

The prayers which the hula folk of old times chanted while
gathering the material in the woods or while weaving it into
shape in the halau for the construction of a shrine did not
form a rigid liturgy; they formed rather a repertory as
elastic as the sighing of the breeze, or the songs of the
birds whose notes embroidered the pure mountain air. There
were many altar-prayers, so that if a prayer came to an end
before the work was done the priest had but to begin the
recitation of another prayer, or, if the spirit of the
occasion so moved him, he would take up again a prayer
already repeated, for until the work was entirely
accomplished the voice of prayer must continue to be heard.

The pule now to be given seems to be specially suited to
that portion of the service which took place in the woods at
the gathering of the poles and greenery. It was designed
specially for the placating of the little god-folk who from
their number were addressed as Kini o ke Akua, the
multitude of the little gods, and who were the counterparts
in old Hawaii of our brownies, elfins, sprites, kobolds,
gnomes, and other woodland imps. These creatures, though
dwarfish and insignificant in person, were in such
numbers—four thousand, forty thousand, four hundred
thousand—and were so impatient of any invasion of their
territory, so jealous of their prerogatives, so spiteful and
revengeful when injured, that it was policy always to keep on
the right side of them.

Pule Kuahu

Footnote 21:
(return) Kini o ke Akua. See note d, p. 24.

Page 22

[Translation.]

Altar-Prayer

From one point of view these pule are not to be regarded as
prayers in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather as
song-offerings, verbal bouquets, affectionate sacrifices to
the gods.

Page 23

III.—THE GODS OF THE HULA.

Of what nature were the gods of the old times, and how did
the ancient Hawaiians conceive of them? As of beings having
the form, the powers, and the passions of humanity, yet
standing above and somewhat apart from men. One sees, as
through a mist, darkly, a figure, standing, moving; in shape
a plant, a tree or vine-clad stump, a bird, a taloned
monster, a rock carved by the fire-queen, a human form, a
puff of vapor—and now it has given place to vacancy. It was
a goddess, perhaps of the hula. In the solitude of the
wilderness one meets a youthful being of pleasing address, of
godlike wit, of elusive beauty; the charm of her countenance
unspoken authority, her gesture command. She seems one with
nature, yet commanding it. Food placed before her remains
untasted; the oven, imu,
²² in which the fascinated host
has heaped his abundance, preparing for a feast, when opened
is found empty; the guest of an hour has disappeared. Again
it was a goddess, perhaps of the hula. Or, again, a traveler
meets a creature of divine beauty, all smiles and loveliness.
The infatuated mortal, smitten with hopeless passion, offers
blandishments; he finds himself by the roadside embracing a
rock. It was a goddess of the hula.

The gods, great and small, superior and inferior, whom the
devotees and practitioners of the hula worshiped and sought
to placate were many; but the goddess Laka was the one to
whom they offered special prayers and sacrifices and to whom
they looked as the patron, the au-makua,
²³ of that
institution. It was for her benefit and in her honor that the
kuahu was set up, and the wealth of flower and leaf used in
its decoration was emblematic of her beauty and glory, a
pledge of her bodily presence, the very forms that she, a
sylvan deity, was wont to assume when she pleased to manifest
herself.

As an additional crutch to the imagination and to emphasize
the fact of her real presence on the altar which she had been
invoked to occupy as her abode, she was symbolized by an
uncarved block of wood from the sacred lama
²⁴ tree. This
was wrapped in a robe of choice yellow tapa, scented with
turmeric, and set conspicuously upon the altar.

Footnote 22:
(return) Imu. The Hawaiian oven, which was a hole in
the ground lined and arched over with stones.

Footnote 23:
(return) Au-makua. An ancestral god.

Footnote 24:
(return) Lama. A beautiful tree having firm,
fine-grained, white wood; used in making sacred inclosures
and for other tabu purposes.

Page 24

Laka was invoked as the god of the maile, the ie-ie, and
other wildwood growths before mentioned (pl. II). She was
hailed as the “sister, wife, of god Lono,” as “the one who by
striving attained favor with the gods of the upper ether;” as
“the kumu
²⁵ hula”—head teacher of the Terpsichorean art;
“the fount of joy;” “the prophet who brings health to the
sick;” “the one whose presence gives life.” In one of the
prayers to Laka she is besought to come and take possession
of the worshiper, to dwell in him as in a temple, to inspire
him in all his parts and faculties—voice, hands, feet, the
whole body.

Laka seems to have been a friend, but not a relative, of the
numerous Pele family. So far as the author has observed, the
fiery goddess is never invited to grace the altar with her
presence, nor is her name so much as mentioned in any prayer
met with.

To compare the gods of the Hawaiian pantheon with those of
classic Greece, the sphere occupied by Laka corresponds most
nearly to that filled by Terpsichore and Euterpe, the muses,
respectively, of dance and of song. Lono, in one song spoken
of as the husband of Laka, had features in common with
Apollo.

That other gods, Kane, Ku, Kanaloa,
²⁶ with Lono,
Ku-pulupulu,
²⁷ and the whole swarm of godlings that peopled
the wildwood, were also invited to favor the performances
with their presence can be satisfactorily explained on the
ground, first, that all the gods were in a sense members of
one family, related to each other by intermarriage, if not by
the ties of kinship; and, second, by the patent fact of that
great underlying cause of bitterness and strife among
immortals as well as mortals, jealousy. It would have been an
eruptive occasion of heart-burning and scandal if by any
mischance a privileged one should have had occasion to feel
slighted; and to have failed in courtesy to that countless
host of wilderness imps and godlings, the Kini Akua,
²⁸
mischievous and irreverent as the monkeys of India, would
indeed have been to tempt a disaster.

While it is true that the testimony of the various
kumu-hula, teachers of the hula, and devotees of the art of
the hula, so far as the author has talked with them, has been
overwhelmingly to the effect that Laka was the one and only
divine patron of the art known to them, there has been a
small number equally ready to assert that there were those
who observed the cult of the goddess Kapo and worshiped her
Page 25 as the patron of the hula. The positive testimony of these
witnesses must be reckoned as of more weight than the
negative testimony of a much larger number, who either have
not seen or will not look at the other side of the shield. At
any rate, among the prayers before the kuahu, of which there
are others yet to be presented, will be found several
addressed to Kapo as the divine patron of the hula.

Footnote 25:
(return) The teacher, a leader and priest of the hula.
The modern school-master is called kumu-kula.

Footnote 26:
(return) Kanaloa. Kane, Ku, Kanaloa, and Lono were the
major gods of the Hawaiian pantheon.

Footnote 27:
(return) Ku-pulupulu. A god of the canoe-makers.

Footnote 28:
(return) Kini Akua. A general expression—often used
together with the ones that follow—meaning the countless
swarms of brownies, elfs, kobolds, sprites, and other
godlings (mischievous imps) that peopled the wilderness.
Kini means literally 40,000, lehu 400,000, and mano
4,000. See the Pule Kuahu—altar-prayer—on page 21. The
Hawaiians, curiously enough, did not put the words mano,
kini, and lehu in the order of their numerical value.

Kapo was sister of Pele and the daughter of Haumea.
²⁹ Among
other roles played by her, like Laka she was at times a
sylvan deity, and it was in the garb of woodland
representations that she was worshiped by hula folk. Her
forms of activity, corresponding to her different
metamorphoses, were numerous, in one of which she was at
times “employed by the kahuna
³⁰ as a messenger in their
black arts, and she is claimed by many as an aumakua,”
³¹
said to be the sister of Kalai-pahoa, the poison god.

Footnote 29:
(return) Haumea. The ancient goddess, or ancestor, the
sixth in line of descent from Wakea.

Footnote 30:
(return) Kahuna. A sorcerer; with a qualifying
adjective it meant a skilled craftsman; Kahuna-kalai-wa’a
was a canoe-builder; kahuna lapaau was a medicine-man, a
doctor, etc.

Footnote 31:
(return) The Lesser Gods of Hawaii, a paper by Joseph S.
Emerson, read before the Hawaiian Historical Society, April
7, 1892.

Unfortunately Kapo had an evil name on account of a
propensity which led her at times to commit actions that seem
worthy only of a demon of lewdness. This was, however, only
the hysteria of a moment, not the settled habit of her life.
On one notable occasion, by diverting the attention of the
bestial pig-god Kama-pua’a, and by vividly presenting to him
a temptation well adapted to his gross nature, she succeeded
in enticing him away at a critical moment, and thus rescued
her sister Pele at a time when the latter’s life was
imperiled by an unclean and violent assault from the
swine-god.

Like Catherine of Russia, who in one mood was the patron of
literature and of the arts and sciences and in another mood a
very satyr, so the Hawaiian goddess Kapo seems to have lived
a double life whose aims were at cross purposes with one
another—now an angel of grace and beauty, now a demon of
darkness and lust.

Do we not find in this the counterpart of nature’s twofold
aspect, who presents herself to dependent humanity at one
time as an alma mater, the food-giver, a divinity of joy and
comfort, at another time as the demon of the storm and
earthquake, a plowshare of fiery destruction?

The name of Hiiaka, the sister of Pele, is one often
mentioned in the prayers of the hula.

Page 26

IV.—SUPPORT AND ORGANIZATION OF THE HULA

In ancient times the hula to a large extent was a creature of
royal support, and for good reason. The actors in this
institution were not producers of life’s necessaries. To the
alii belonged the land and the sea and all the useful
products thereof. Even the jetsam whale-tooth and wreckage
scraps of iron that ocean cast up on the shore were claimed
by the lord of the land. Everything was the king’s. Thus it
followed of necessity that the support of the hula must in
the end rest upon the alii. As in ancient Rome it was a
senator or general, enriched by the spoil of a province, who
promoted the sports of the arena, so in ancient Hawaii it was
the chief or headman of the district who took the initiative
in the promotion of the people’s communistic sports and of
the hula.

We must not imagine that the hula was a thing only of kings’
courts and chiefish residences. It had another and democratic
side. The passion for the hula was broadspread. If other
agencies failed to meet the demand, there was nothing to
prevent a company of enthusiasts from joining themselves
together in the pleasures and, it might be, the profits of
the hula. Their spokesman—designated as the po’o-puaa,
from the fact that a pig, or a boar’s head, was required of
him as an offering at the kuahu—was authorized to secure the
services of some expert to be their kumu. But with the hula
all roads lead to the king’s court.

Let us imagine a scene at the king’s residence. The alii,
rousing from his sloth and rubbing his eyes, rheumy with
debauch and awa, overhears remark on the doings of a new
company of hula dancers who have come into the neighborhood.
He summons his chief steward.

“What is this new thing of which they babble?” he demands.

“It is nothing, son of heaven,” answers the kneeling steward.

“They spoke of a hula. Tell me, what is it?”

“Ah, thou heaven-born (lani), it was but a trifle—a new
company, young graduates of the halau, have set themselves up
as great ones; mere rustics; they have no proper acquaintance
with the traditions of the art as taught by the bards of…
your majesty’s father. They mouth and twist the old songs
all awry, thou son of heaven.”

“Enough. I will hear them to-morrow. Send a messenger for
this new kumu. Fill again my bowl with awa.”
Page 27
Thus it comes about that the new hula company gains audience
at court and walks the road that, perchance, leads to
fortune. Success to the men and women of the hula means not
merely applause, in return for the incense of flattery; it
means also a shower of substantial favors—food, garments,
the smile of royalty, perhaps land—things that make life a
festival. If welcome grows cold and it becomes evident that
the harvest has been reaped, they move on to fresh woods and
pastures new.

To return from this apparent digression, it was at the king’s
court—if we may extend the courtesy of this phrase to a
group of thatched houses—that were gathered the bards and
those skilled in song, those in whose memories were stored
the mythologies, traditions, genealogies, proverbial wisdom,
and poetry that, warmed by emotion, was the stuff from which
was spun the songs of the hula. As fire is produced by
friction, so it was often by the congress of wits rather than
by the flashing of genius that the songs of the hula were
evolved.

The composition and criticism of a poetical passage were a
matter of high importance, often requiring many suggestions
and much consultation. If the poem was to be a mele-inoa, a
name-song to eulogize some royal or princely scion, it must
contain no word of ill-omen. The fate-compelling power of
such a word, once shot from the mouth, was beyond recall.
Like the incantation of the sorcerer, the kahuna ánaaná, it
meant death to the eulogized one. If not, it recoiled on the
life of the singer.

The verbal form once settled, it remained only to stereotype
it on the memories of the men and women who constituted the
literary court or conclave. Think not that only thus were
poems produced in ancient Hawaii. The great majority of songs
were probably the fruit of solitary inspiration, in which the
bard poured out his heart like a song-bird, or uttered his
lone vision as a seer. The method of poem production in
conclave may be termed the official method. It was often done
at the command of an alii. So much for the fabrication, the
weaving, of a song.

If the composition was intended as a eulogy, it was
cantillated ceremoniously before the one it honored; if in
anticipation of a prince yet unborn, it was daily recited
before the mother until the hour of her delivery; and this
cantillation published it abroad. If the song was for
production in the hula, it lay warm in the mind of the kumu,
the master and teacher of the hula, until such time as he had
organized his company.

The court of the alii was a vortex that drew in not only the
bards and men of lore, but the gay and fashionable rout of
pleasure-seekers, the young men and women of shapely form and
gracious presence, the sons and daughters of the king’s
Page 28 henchmen and favorites; among them, perhaps, the offspring of
the king’s morganatic alliances and amours—the flower and
pick of Hawaii’s youth. From these the kumu selected those
most fitted by beauty and grace of form, as well as quickness
of wit and liveliness of imagination, to take part in the
hula.

The performers in the hula were divided into two classes, the
olapa—agile ones—and the ho’o-paa—steadfast ones. The
rôle of olapa, as was fitting, was assigned to the young men
and young women who could best illustrate in their persons
the grace and beauty of the human form. It was theirs,
sometimes while singing, to move and pose and gesture in the
dance; sometimes also to punctuate their song and action with
the lighter instruments of music. The rôle of ho’o-paa, on
the other hand, was given to men and women of greater
experience and of more maturity. They handled the heavier
instruments and played their parts mostly while sitting or
kneeling, marking the time with their instrumentation. They
also lent their voices to swell the chorus or utter the
refrain of certain songs, sometimes taking the lead in the
song or bearing its whole burden, while the light-footed
olapa gave themselves entirely to the dance. The part of the
ho’o-paa was indeed the heavier, the more exacting duty.

Such was the personnel of a hula troupe when first gathered
by the hula-master for training and drill in the halau, now
become a school for the hula. Among the pupils the kumu was
sure to find some old hands at the business, whose presence,
like that of veterans in a squad of recruits, was a leaven to
inspire the whole company with due respect for the spirit and
traditions of the historic institution and to breed in the
members the patience necessary to bring them to the highest
proficiency.

The instruction of the kumu, as we are informed, took a wide
range. It dealt in elaborate detail on such matters as
accent, inflection, and all that concerns utterance and
vocalization. It naturally paid great attention to gesture
and pose, attitude and bodily action. That it included
comment on the meaning that lay back of the words may be
gravely doubted. The average hula dancer of modern times
shows great ignorance of the mele he recites, and this is
true even of the kumu-hula. His work too often is largely
perfunctory, a matter of sound and form, without appeal to
the intellect.

It would not be legitimate, however, to conclude from this
that ignorance of the meaning was the rule in old times;
those were the days when the nation’s traditional songs,
myths, and lore formed the equipment of every alert and
receptive mind, chief or commoner. There was no printed page
to while away the hours of idleness. The library was stored
in one’s memory. The language of the mele, which now has
Page 29 become antiquated, then was familiar speech. For a kumu-hula
to have given instruction in the meaning of a song would have
been a superfluity, as if one at the present day were to
inform a group of well-educated actors and actresses who was
Pompey or Julius Cæsar.

“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue.” Hamlet’s words to the players
were, it may be supposed, the substance of the kumu’s
instructions to the pupils in his halau.

The organization of a hula company was largely democratic.
The kumu—in modern sense, the teacher—was the leader and
conductor, responsible for the training and discipline of the
company. He was the business manager of the enterprise; the
priest, kahuna, the leader in the religious exercises, the
one who interpreted the will of heaven, especially of the
gods whose favor determined success. He might be called to
his position by the choice of the company, appointed by the
command of the alii who promoted the enterprise, or
self-elected in case the enterprise was his own. He had under
him a kokua kumu, a deputy, who took charge during his
absence.

The po’o-puaa was an officer chosen by the pupils to be
their special agent and mouthpiece. He saw to the execution
of the kumu’s judgments and commands, collected the fines,
and exacted the penalties imposed by the kumu. It fell to him
to convey to the altar the presents of garlands, awa, and the
like that were contributed to the halau.

The paepae, also chosen by the pupils, subject to
confirmation by the kumu, acted as an assistant of the
po’o-puaa. During the construction of the kuahu the po’o-puaa
stood to the right, the paepae at his left. They were in a
general sense guardians of the kuahu.

The ho’o-ulu was the guard stationed at the door. He
sprinkled with sea-water mixed with turmeric everyone who
entered the halau. He also acted as sergeant-at-arms to keep
order and remove anyone who made a disturbance. It was his
duty each day to place a fresh bowl of awa on the altar of
the goddess (hanai kuahu), literally to feed the altar.

In addition to these officials, a hula company naturally
required the services of a miscellaneous retinue of stewards,
cooks, fishermen, hewers of wood, and drawers of water.

RULES OF CONDUCT AND TABUS

Without a body of rules, a strict penal code, and a firm hand
to hold in check the hot bloods of both sexes, it would have
been impossible to keep order and to accomplish the business
purpose of the organization. The explosive force of passion
would have made the gathering a signal for the breaking loose
of pandemonium. That it did not always so result is a
Page 30 compliment alike to the self-restraint of the people and to
the sway that artistic ideals held over their minds, but,
above all, to a peculiar system of discipline wisely adapted
to the necessities of human nature. It does not seem likely
that a Thespian band of our own race would have held their
passions under equal check if surrounded by the same
temptations and given the same opportunities as these
Polynesians. It may well be doubted if the bare authority of
the kumu would have sufficed to maintain discipline and to
keep order, had it not been reenforced by the dread powers of
the spirit world in the shape of the tabu.

The awful grasp of this law; this repressive force, the tabu,
held fast the student from the moment of his entrance into
the halau. It denied this pleasure, shut off that innocent
indulgence, curtailed liberty in this direction and in that.
The tabu waved before his imagination like a flaming sword,
barring approach to the Eden of his strongest propensity.

The rules and discipline of the halau, the school for the
hula, from our point of view, were a mixture of shrewd common
sense and whimsical superstition. Under the head of tabus
certain articles of food were denied; for instance, the
sugar-cane—ko—was forbidden. The reason assigned was that
if one indulged in it his work as a practitioner would amount
to nothing; in the language of the kumu, aohe e leo ana kana
mau hana, his work will be a failure. The argument turned on
the double meaning of the word ko, the first meaning being
sugar cane, the second, accomplishment. The Hawaiians were
much impressed by such whimsical nominalisms. Yet there is a
backing of good sense to the rule. Anyone who has chewed the
sweet stalk can testify that for some time thereafter his
voice is rough, ill-fitted for singing or elocution.

The strictest propriety and decorum were exacted of the
pupils; there must be no license whatever. Even married
people during the weeks preceding graduation must observe
abstinence toward their partners. The whole power of one’s
being must be devoted to the pursuit of art.

The rules demanded also the most punctilious personal
cleanliness. Above all things, one must avoid contact with a
corpse. Such defilement barred one from entrance to the halau
until ceremonial cleansing had been performed. The offender
must bathe in the ocean; the kumu then aspersed him with holy
water, uttered a prayer, ordered a penalty, an offering to
the kuahu, and declared the offender clean. This done, he
was again received into fellowship at the halau.

The ordinary penalty for a breach of ceremony or an offense
against sexual morality was the offering of a baked porkling
with awa. Since the introduction of money the penalty has
generally been reckoned on a commercial basis; a money fine
is imposed. The offering of pork and awa is retained as a
concession to tradition.

Page 31

V—CEREMONIES OF GRADUATION; DÉBUT OF A HULA DANCER

CEREMONIES OF GRADUATION

The ai-lolo rite and ceremony marked the consummation of a
pupil’s readiness for graduation from the school of the halau
and his formal entrance into the guild of hula dancers. As
the time drew near, the kumu tightened the reins of
discipline, and for a few days before that event no pupil
might leave the halau save for the most stringent necessity,
and then only with the head muffled (pulo’u) to avoid
recognition, and he might engage in no conversation whatever
outside the halau.

The night preceding the day of ai-lolo was devoted to special
services of dance and song. Some time after midnight the
whole company went forth to plunge into the ocean, thus to
purge themselves of any lurking ceremonial impurity. The
progress to the ocean and the return they made in complete
nudity. “Nakedness is the garb of the gods.” On their way to
and from the bath they must not look back, they must not turn
to the right hand or to the left.

The kumu, as the priest, remained at the halau, and as the
procession returned from the ocean he met it at the door and
sprinkled each one (pikai) with holy water. Then came
another period of dance and song; and then, having
cantillated a pule hoonoa, to lift the tabu, the kumu went
forth to his own ceremonial cleansing bath in the sea. During
his absence his deputy, the kokua kumu, took charge of the
halau. When the kumu reached the door on his return, he made
himself known by reciting a mele wehe puka, the
conventional password.

Still another exercise of song and dance, and the wearied
pupils are glad to seek repose. Some will not even remove the
short dancing skirts that are girded about them, so eager
are they to snatch an hour of rest; and some lie down with
bracelets and anklets yet unclasped.

At daybreak the kumu rouses the company with the tap of the
drum. After ablutions, before partaking of their simple
breakfast, the company stand before the altar and recite a
tabu-removing prayer, accompanying the cantillation with a
rhythmic tapping of feet and clapping of hands:

Pule Hoonoa

[Translation.]

Tabu-lifting Prayer

Footnote 32:
(return) Lu ka hua. Casts now its seeds. The maile vine
(pl. IV), one of the goddess’s emblems, casts its seeds,
meaning that the goddess gives the pupils skill and inspires
them.

At the much-needed repast to which the company now sit down
there may be present a gathering of friends and relatives and
of hula experts, called olóhe. Soon the porkling chosen to
be the ai-lólo offering is brought in—a black suckling
without spot or blemish. The kumu holds it down while all the
pupils gather and lay their hands upon his hands; and he
expounds to them the significance of the ceremony. If they
consecrate themselves to the work in hand in sincerity and
with true hearts, memory will be strong and the training, the
knowledge, and the songs that have been intrusted to the
memory will stay. If they are heedless, regardless of their
vows, the songs they have learned will fly away.

The ceremony is long and impressive; many songs are used.
Sometimes, it was claimed, the prayers of the kumu at this
laying on of hands availed to cause the death of the little
animal. On the completion of the ceremony the offering is
taken out and made ready for the oven.

One of the first duties of the day is the dismantling of the
old kuahu, the shrine, and the construction of another from
new materials as a residence for the goddess. While night yet
shadows the earth the attendants and friends of the pupils
Page 33 have gone up into the mountains to collect the material for
the new shrine. The rustic artists, while engaged in this
loving work of building and weaving the new kuahu, cheer and
inspire one another with joyful songs vociferous with the
praise of Laka. The halau also they decorate afresh, strewing
the floor with clean rushes, until the whole place enthralls
the senses like a bright and fragrant temple.

The kumu now grants special dispensation to the pupils to go
forth that they may make good the results of the neglect of
the person incident to long confinement in the halau. For
days, for weeks, perhaps for months, they have not had full
opportunity to trim hair, nails, or beard, to anoint and
groom themselves. They use this short absence from the hall
also to supply themselves with wreaths of fragrant maile,
crocus-yellow ilima, scarlet-flaming lehua, fern, and what
not.

At the appointed hour the pupils, wreathed and attired like
nymphs and dryads, assemble in the halau, sweet with woodsy
perfumes. At the door they receive aspersion with consecrated
water.

The ai-lolo offering, cooked to a turn—no part raw, no part
cracked or scorched—is brought in from the imu, its bearer
sprinkled by the guard at the entrance. The kumu, having
inspected the roast offering and having declared it
ceremonially perfect, gives the signal, and the company break
forth in songs of joy and of adulation to goddess Laka:

Mele Kuau

Footnote 33:(return) Mo’o-helaia. A female deity, a kupua, who at
death became one of the divinities, au-makua, of the hula.
Her name was conferred on the place claimed as her residence,
on Mauna-loa, island of Molokai.

Footnote 34:(return)
Ohia-Ku. Full name ohia-ku-makua; a variety
of the ohìa, or lehua (pl. XIII), whose wood was used in
making temple gods. A rough stem of this tree stood on each
side near the hala-pepe. (See pl. III, also pp. 19-20.)

Footnote 35:(return) Mauna-loa. Said to be the mountain of that
name on Molokai, not that on Hawaii.

Footnote 36:(return) Kaulana-ula. Full form Kaulana-a-ula; the
name of a deity belonging to the order, papa, of the hula.
Its meaning is explained in the expression ula leo, in the
next line.

Footnote 37:(return) Ula leo. A singing or trilling sound, a
tinnitus aurium, a sign that the deity Kaulanaula was
making some communication to the one who heard it.

“By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.”

Page 34

[Translation.]

Altar-Prayer

There is no stint of prayer-song. While the offering rests on
the kuahu, the Joyful service continues:

Mele Kuahu

[Translation.]

Altar-Prayer

At the conclusion of this loving service of worship and song
each member of the troupe removes from his head and neck the
wreaths that had bedecked him, and with them crowns the
image of the goddess until her altar is heaped with the
offerings.

Now comes the pith of the ceremony: the novitiates sit down
to the feast of ai-lolo, theirs the place of honor, at the
head of the table, next the kuahu. The ho’o-pa’a, acting
as carver, selects the typical parts—snout, ear-tips, tail,
feet, portions of the vital organs, especially the brain
(lolo). This last it is which gives name to the ceremony.
He sets an equal portion before each novitiate. Each one must
eat all that is set before him. It is a mystical rite, a
sacrament; as he eats he consciously partakes of the virtue
of the goddess that is transmitted to himself.

Page 35

Meantime the olohe and friends of the novitiates, inspired
with the proper enthusiasm, of the occasion, lift their
voices in joyful cantillations in honor of the goddess,
accompanied with the clapping of hands.

The ceremony now reaches a new stage. The kumu lifts the tabu
by uttering a prayer—always a song—and declares the place
and the feast free, and the whole assembly sit down to enjoy
the bounty that is spread up and down the halau. On this
occasion men and women may eat in common. The only articles
excluded from this feast are luau—a food much like
spinach, made by cooking the young and delicate taro
leaf—and the drupe of the hala, the pandanus (pl. xviii).

The company sit down to eat and to drink; presently they rise
to dance and sing. The kumu leads in a tabu-lifting,
freedom-giving song and the ceremony of ai-lolo is over. The
pupils have been graduated from the school of the halau; they
are now members of the great guild of hula dancers. The time
has come for them to make their bow to the waiting public
outside, to bid for the favor of the world. This is to be
their “little go;” they will spread their wings for a
greater flight on the morrow.

The kumu with his big drum, and the musicians, the ho’o-pa’a,
pass through the door and take their places outside in the
lanai, where sit the waiting multitude. At the tap of the
drum the group of waiting olapa plume themselves like fine
birds eager to show their feathers; and, as they pass out the
halau door and present themselves to the breathless audience,
into every pose and motion of their gliding, swaying figures
they pour a full tide of emotion in studied and unstudied
effort to captivate the public.

DÉBUT OF A HULA DANCER

The occasion is that of a lifetime; it is their uniki,
their debut. The song chosen must rise to the dignity of the
occasion. Let us listen to the song that enthralls the
audience seated in the rushstrown lanai, that we may judge of
its worthiness.

He Mele-Inoa (no Naihe)
³⁸

Footnote 38:
(return) Naihe. A man of strong character, but not a
high chief. He was horn in Kona and resided at Napoopoo. His
mother was Ululani, his father Keawe-a-heulu, who was a
celebrated general and strategist under Kamehameha I.

Footnote 39:
(return) Mahiehie. A term conferring dignity and
distinction.

Footnote 40:
(return) Onaulu-loa. A roller of great length and
endurance, one that reaches the shore, in contrast to a
kakala.

Footnote 41:
(return) Kalai. An archaic word meaning forty.

Footnote 42:
(return) Hoaka. A crescent; the name of the second day
of the month. The allusion is to the curve (downward) of a
large number(kakai) of malo when hung on a line, the usual
way of keeping such articles.

Footnote 43:
(return) Malo kai. The ocean is sometimes poetically
termed the malo or pa-á of the naked swimmer, or bather.
It covers his nakedness.

Footnote 44:
(return) Ka’ika’i. To lead or to carry; a tropical use
of the word. The sun is described as leading the board.

Footnote 45:
(return) Hale-pó. In the opinion of the author it is
the name of the board. A skilled Hawaiian says it is the name
given the surf of a place at Napoopoo, in Kona, Hawaii. The
action is not located there, but in Puna, it seems to the
author.

Footnote 46:
(return) Kahiki. Tahiti, or any foreign country; a term
of grandiloquence.

Footnote 47:
(return) Wakea. A mythical name, coming early in
Hawaiian genealogies; here used in exaggeration to show the
age of the roller.

Footnote 48:
(return) Ho’ohua. Applied to a roller, one that rolls
on and swells higher.

Footnote 49:
(return) Opu’u. Said of a roller that completes its run
to shore.

Footnote 50:
(return) Kua-pá. Said of a roller as above that dies
at the shore.

Footnote 51:
(return) Maka-kai. The springing-up of the surf after
an interval of quiet.

Footnote 52:
(return) Kakála. Rough, heaped up, one wave overriding
another, a chop sea.

Footnote 53:
(return) Hiki-au. Said to be the name of a temple.

Footnote 54:
(return) Kuhihewa. Full name Ka-kuhi-hewa, a
distinguished king of Oahu.

Footnote 55:
(return) O iu. Meaning that the board dug its nose
into the reef or sand.

[Translation.]

A Name-Song, a Eulogy (for Naihe)

This spirited song, while not a full description of a
surf-riding scene, gives a vivid picture of that noble sport.
The last nine verses have been omitted, as they add neither
to the action nor to the interest.

It seems surprising that the accident spoken of in line 19
should be mentioned; for it is in glaring opposition to the
canons that were usually observed in the composition of a
mele-inoa. In the construction of a eulogy the Hawaiians
were not only punctiliously careful to avoid mention of
anything susceptible of sinister interpretation, but they
were superstitiously sensitive to any such unintentional
happening. As already mentioned (p. 27), they believed that
the fate compelling power of a word of ill-omen was
inevitable. If it did not result in the death of the one
eulogized, retributive justice turned the evil influence back
on him who uttered it.

Page 38

VI.—THE PASSWORD—THE SONG OF ADMISSION

There prevailed among the practitioners of the hula from one
end of the group to the other a mutual understanding,
amounting almost to a sort of freemasonry, which gave to any
member of the guild the right of free entrance at all times
to the hall, or halau, where a performance was under way.
Admission was conditioned, however, on the utterance of a
password at the door. A snatch of song, an oli, denominated
mele kahea, or mele wehe puka, was chanted, which, on
being recognized by those within, was answered in the same
language of hyperbole, and the door was opened.

The verbal accuracy of any mele kahea that may be adduced is
at the present day one of the vexed questions among hula
authorities, each hula-master being inclined to maintain that
the version given by another is incorrect. This remark
applies, though in smaller measure, to the whole body of
mele, pule, and oli that makes up the songs and liturgy of
the hula as well as to the traditions that guided the
maestro, or kumu-hula, in the training of his company. The
reasons for these differences of opinion and of test, now
that there is to be a written text, are explained by the
following facts: The devotees and practitioners of the hula
were divided into groups that were separated from one another
by wide intervals of sea and land. They belonged quite likely
to more than one cult, for indeed there were many gods and
au-makua to whom they sacrificed and offered prayers. The
passwords adopted by one generation or by the group of
practitioners on one island might suffer verbal changes in
transmission to a later generation or to a remote island.

Again, it should be remembered that the entire body of
material forming the repertory of the hula—pule, mele, and
oli—was intrusted to the keeping of the memory, without the
aid of letters or, so far as known, of any mnemonic device;
and the human mind, even under the most athletic discipline,
is at best an imperfect conservator of literary form. The
result was what might be expected: as the imagination and
emotions of the minstrel warmed under the inspiration of his
trust, glosses and amendments crept in. These, however,
caused but slight variations in the text. The substance
remains substantially the same.

After carefully weighing the matter, the author can not avoid
the conclusion that jealousy had much to do with the slight
differences now manifest, that one version is as
Page 39 authoritative as another, and that it would be well for each
kumu-hula to have kept in mind the wise adage that shines
among the sayings of his nation: Aohe pau ka ike i kau halau

⁵⁶—“Think not that all of wisdom resides in you
halau.”
⁵⁷

Footnote 56:
(return) Sophocles (Antigone, 705) had said the same
thing:[Greek: me nun en ethos pounon en sautô phorei ôs
phes su, kouden allo, tout’ orphôs echein]—“Don’t get this
idea fixed in your head, that what you say, and nothing else,
is right.”

Footnote 57:
(return) Halau. As previously explained, in this
connection halau has a meaning similar to our word
“school,” or “academy,” a place where some art was taught, as
wrestling, boxing, or the hula.

Mele Kahea

[Translation.]

Password

Footnote 58:
(return) Ka-papala. A verdant region on the
southeastern flank of Mauna-Loa.

Hear now the answer chanted by voices from within:

Mele Komo

Page 40

[Translation.]

Song of Welcome

Another fragment that was sometimes used as a password is the
following bit of song taken from the story of Hiiaka, sister
of Pele. She is journeying with the beautiful Hopoe to fetch
prince Lohiau to the court of Pele. They have come by a steep
and narrow path to the brink of the Wai-lua river, Kauai, at
this point spanned by a single plank. But the bridge is gone,
removed by an ill-tempered naiad (witch) said to have come
from Kahiki, whose name, Wai-lua, is the same as that of the
stream. Hiiaka calls out, demanding that the plank be
restored to its place. Wai-lua does not recognize the deity
in Hiiaka and, sullen, makes no response. At this the goddess
puts forth her strength, and Wai-lua, stripped of her power
and reduced to her true station, that of a mo’o, a reptile,
seeks refuge in the caverns beneath the river. Hiiaka betters
the condition of the crossing by sowing it with stepping
stones. The stones remain in evidence to this day.

Mele Kahea

[Translation.]

Password—Song

In later, in historic times, this visitor, whom we have kept
long waiting at the door, might have voiced his appeal in the
passionate words of this comparatively modern song:

Footnote 59:
(return) Wai-ale-ale (Leaping-water). The central
mountain-mass of Kauai.

Page 41

Mele Kahea
⁶⁰

[Translation.]

Password—Song

Footnote 60:
(return) This utterance of passion is said to have been,
the composition of the Princess-Kamamalu, as an address to
Prince William Lunalilo, to whom she was at one time
affianced and would have married, but that King Liholiho
(Kamehameha IV) would not allow the marriage. Thereby hangs a
tragedy.

Footnote 61:
(return) La’a. The region in Hawaii now known as Ola’a
was originally called La’a. The particle o has become fused
with the word.

Footnote 62:
(return) Hewa ka waha. This expression, here tortured
into “(till) the mouth awry,” is difficult of translation. A
skilled Hawaiian scholar suggests, it may mean to change one
from, an enemy to a friend by stopping his mouth with food.

Footnote 63:
(return) Wa’a. Literally a canoe. This is a euphemism
for the human body, a gift often too freely granted. It will
be noted that in the answering mele komo, the song of
admission, the reward promised is more modestly
measured—“Simply the voice.”

The answer to this appeal for admission was in these words:

Mele Komo

[Translation.]

Welcoming-Song

The cantillation of the mele komo: in answer to the
visitor’s petition, meant not only the opening to him of the
halau door, but also his welcome to the life of the halau as
a heart-guest of honor, trebly welcome as the bringer of
fresh tidings from the outside world.

Page 42

VII.—WORSHIP AT THE ALTAR OF THE HALAU

The first duty of a visitor on being admitted to the halau
while the tabu was on—that is, during the conduct of a
regular hula—was to do reverence at the kuahu. The
obligations of religion took precedence of all social
etiquette. He reverently approaches the altar, to which all
eyes are turned, and with outstretched hands pours out a
supplication that breathes the aroma of ancient prayer:

Pule Kuahu (no Laka)

Footnote 64:
(return) A’a-lii. A deep-rooted tree, sacred to Laka
or to Kapo.

Footnote 65:
(return) Hoo-ulu. Literally to make grow; secondarily,
to inspire, to prosper, to bring good luck. This is the
meaning most in mind in modern times, since the hula has
become a commercial venture.

Footnote 66:
(return) Ki-ele. A flowering plant native to the
Hawaiian woods, also cultivated, sacred to Laka, and perhaps
to Kapo. The leaves are said to be pointed and curved like
the beak of the bird i-iwi, and the flower has the gorgeous
yellow-red color of that bird.

Footnote 67:
(return) It has been proposed to amend this verse by
substituting akua, for ku’i, thus making the idea the
gods of the hula.

Footnote 68:
(return) Haí-ka-malama. An epithet applied to Laka.

Footnote 69:
(return) Kina’u. Said to mean Hiiaka, the sister of
Pele.

Footnote 70:
(return) Kapo ula. Red, ula, was the favorite color
of Kapo. The kahuna anaana, high priests of sorcery, of the
black art, and of murder, to whom Kapo was at times
procuress, made themselves known as such by the display of a
red flag and the wearing of a red malo.

[Translation.]

Altar-Prayer (to Laka)

A single prayer may not suffice as the offering at Laka’s
altar. His repertory is full; the visitor begins anew, this
time on a different tack:

Pule Kuahu (no Laka)

[Translation.]

Altar-Prayer (to Laka)

Footnote 71:(return) Lea. The same as Laia, or probably Haumea.

Footnote 72:(return) Wahie loa. This must be a mistake. Laka the
son of Wahie-loa was a great voyager. His canoe
(kau-méli-éli) was built for him by the gods. In it he
sailed to the South to rescue his father’s bones from the
witch who had murdered him. This Laka had his home at
Kipahulu, Maui, and is not to be confounded with Laka,
goddess of the hula.

In the translation of this pule the author has found it
necessary to depart from the verse arrangement that obtains
in the Hawaiian text.

The religious services of the halau, though inspired by one
motive, were not tied to a single ritual or to one set of
prayers. Prayer marked the beginning and the ending of every
play—that is, of every dance—and of every important event
in the programme of the halau; but there were many prayers
from which the priest might select. After the prayer
specially addressed to Laka the visitor might use a petition
of more general scope. Such is ’the one now to be given:

He Pule Kuahu (ia Kane ame Kapo); a he Pule Hoolei

Footnote 73:
(return) Maláma. Accented on the penult, as here, the
word means to enlighten or a light (same in second verse). In
the third and fourth verses the accent is changed to the
first syllable, and the word here means to preserve, to
foster. These words furnish an example of poetical
word-repetition.

Footnote 74:
(return) Onioni. To squirm, to dodge, to move. The
meaning here seems to be to move with delight.

Footnote 75:
(return) Wahine lei. A reference to Laka, the child
of Kapo, who was symbolized by a block of wood on the altar.
(See p. 23.)

Footnote 76:
(return) Hala-hala a i’a. Said to be a certain kind of
fish that was ornamented about its tailend with a band of
bright color; therefore an object of admiration and desire.

Footnote 77:
(return) Hala-Hala a mea. The ending mea is perhaps
taken from the last half of the proper name Hau-mea who was
Kapo’s mother. It belongs to the land, in contrast to the
sea, and seems to be intended to intensify and extend the
meaning of the term previously used. The passage is
difficult. Expert Hawaiians profess their inability to fathom
its meaning.

Footnote 78:
(return) Alihi luna. The line or “stretching cord,”
that runs the length of a net at its top, the a lalo being
the corresponding line at the bottom of the net. The exact
significance of this language complimentary to Kapo can not
be phrased compactly.

Footnote 79:
(return) Poha-kú. The line that runs up and down at the
end of a long net, by which it may be anchored.

Footnote 80:
(return) Moo-helaia. See note a, p. 33.

Footnote 81:
(return) Kaulana-a-ula. See note d, p, 33.

Footnote 82:
(return) Ula leo. See note e, p. 33.

Footnote 83:
(return) Kaana. A place on Mauna-loa, Molokai, where
the lehua greatly flourished. The body of Kapo, it is said,
now lies there in appearance a rock. The same claim is made
for a rock at Wailua, Hana, Maui.

Footnote 84:
(return) Pu-awa hiwa (hiwa, black). A kind of strong
awa. The gentle exhilaration, as well as the deep sleep, of
awa were benefits ascribed to the gods. Awa was an essential
to most complete sacrifices.

Footnote 85:
(return) Wai. Literally water, refers to the bowl of
awa, replenished each day, which set on the altar of the
goddess.

Verses 9 to 15, inclusive, are almost identical in form with
the first seven verses in the Mele Kuahu addressed to Laka,
given on page 33.

[Translation.]

An Altar-Prayer (to Kane and Kapo): also a Garland-Prayer,
used while decorating the altar

The little god-folk, whom the ancients called Kini
Akua—myriads of gods—and who made the wildwoods and
wilderness their playground, must also be placated. They were
a lawless set of imps; the elfins, brownies, and kobolds of
our fairy world were not “up to them” in wanton deviltry. If
there is to be any luck in the house, it can only be when
they are dissuaded from outbreaking mischief.

The pule next given is a polite invitation to these little
brown men of the woods to honor the occasion with their
presence and to bring good luck at their coming. It is such a
prayer as the visitor might choose to repeat at this time, or
it might be used on other occasions, as at the consecration
of the kuahu:

He Pule Kuahu (no Kini Akua)

[Translation.]

An Altar-Prayer (to the Kini Akua)

The visitor, having satisfied his sense of what the occasion
demands, changes his tone from that of cantillation to
ordinary speech, and concludes his worship with a petition
conceived in the spirit of the following prayer:

E ola ia’u, i ka malihini; a pela hoi na kamaaina, ke kumu,
na haumana, ia oe, e Laka. E Laka ia Pohaku i ka wawae. E
Laka i ke kupe’e. E Laka ia Luukia i ka pa-u; e Laka i ke
kuhi; e Laka i ka leo; e Laka i ka lei. E Laka i ke ku ana
imua o ke anaina.

Page 47

[Translation.]

Thy blessing, O Laka, on me the stranger, and on the
residents, teacher and pupils. O Laka, give grace to the feet
of Pohaku; and to her bracelets and anklets; comeliness to
the figure and skirt of Luukia. To (each one) give gesture
and voice. O Laka, make beautiful the lei; inspire the
dancers when they stand before the assembly.

At the close of this service of song and prayer the visitor
will turn from the kuahu and exchange salutations and
greetings with his friends in the halau.

The song-prayer “Now, Kane, approach, illumine the altar” (p.
45) calls for remark. It brings up again the question,
previously discussed, whether there were not two distinct
cults of worshipers, the one devoted to Laka, the other to
Kapo. The following facts will throw light on the question.
On either side of the approach to the altar stood,
sentinel-like, a tall stem of hala-pepe, a graceful, slender
column, its head of green sword-leaves and scarlet drupes
making a beautiful picture. (See p. 24.) These are said to
have been the special emblems of the goddess Kapo.

The following account of a conversation the author had with
an old woman, whose youthful days were spent as a hula
dancer, will also help to disentangle the subject and explain
the relation of Kapo to the hula:

“Will you not recite again the prayer you just now uttered,
and slowly, that it may be written down?” the author asked of
her. “Many prayers for the kuahu have been collected, but
this one differs from them all.”

“We Hawaiians,” she answered, “have been taught that these
matters are sacred (kapu) and must not be bandied about
from mouth to mouth.”

“Aye, but the time of the tabus has passed. Then, too, in a
sense having been initiated into hula matters, there can be
no impropriety in my dealing with them in a kindly spirit.”

“No harm, of course, will come to you, a haole (foreigner).
The question is how it will affect us.”

“Tell me, were there two different classes of worshipers, one
class devoted to the worship of Laka and another class
devoted to the worship of Kapo?”

“No,” she answered, “Kapo and Laka were one in spirit, though
their names were two.”

“Haumea was the mother of Kapo. Who was her father?”

“Yes, Haumea was the mother, and Kua-ha-ilo
⁸⁶ was the
father:”

“How about Laka?”

Footnote 86:
(return) Kua-ha-ilo. A god of the kahuna anaana;
meaning literally to breed maggots in the back.

Page 48

“Laka was the daughter of Kapo. Yet as a patron, of the hula
Laka stands first; she was worshiped at an earlier date than
Kapo; but they are really one.”

Further questioning brought out the explanation that Laka was
not begotten in ordinary generation; she was a sort of
emanation from Kapo. It was as if the goddess should sneeze
and a deity should issue with the breath from her nostrils;
or should wink, and thereby beget spiritual offspring from
the eye, or as if a spirit should issue forth at some
movement of the ear or mouth.

When the old woman’s scruples had been laid to rest, she
repeated slowly for the author’s benefit the pule given on
pages 45 and 46, “Now, Kane, approach,” * * * of which the
first eight lines and much of the last part, to him, were
new.

Page 49

VIII.—COSTUME OF THE HULA DANCER

The costume of the hula dancer was much the same for both
sexes, its chief article a simple short skirt about the
waist, the pa-ú. (PL I.)

When the time has come for a dance, the halau becomes one
common dressing room. At a signal from the kumu the work
begins. The putting on of each article of costume is
accompanied by a special song.

First come the ku-pe’e, anklets of whale teeth, bone,
shell-work, dog-teeth, fiber-stuffs, and what not. While all
stoop in unison they chant the song of the anklet:

Mele Ku-pe’e

[Translation.]

Anklet-Song

Footnote 87:
(return) Kupukupu. Said to be a fragrant grass.

Footnote 88:
(return) Kane-hoa. Said to be a hill at Kaupo, Maul.
Another person says it is a hill at Lihue, on Oahu. The same
name is often repeated.

Footnote 89:
(return) Ho-a. To bind. An instance of word-repetition,
common in Hawaiian poetry.

Footnote 90:
(return) Wai-kaloa. A cool wind that Wows at Lihue,
Kauai

Footnote 91:
(return) Alina. A scar, or other mark of disfigurement,
a moral blemish. In ancient times lovers inflicted injuries
on themselves to prove devotion.

The short skirt, pa-u, was the most important piece of
attire worn by the Hawaiian female. As an article of daily
wear it represented many stages of evolution beyond the
primitive fig-leaf, being fabricated from a great variety of
Page 50 materials furnished by the garden of nature. In its simplest
terms the pa-ú was a mere fringe of vegetable fibers. When
placed as the shield of modesty about the loins of a woman of
rank, or when used as the full-dress costume of a dancing
girl on a ceremonious occasion, it took on more elaborate
forms, and was frequently of tapa, a fabric the finest
specimens of which would not have shamed the wardrobe of an
empress.

In the costuming of the hula girl the same variety obtained
as in the dress of a woman of rank. Sometimes her pa-ú would
be only a close-set fringe of ribbons stripped from the bark
of the hibiscus (hau), the ti leaf or banana fiber, or a
fine rush, strung upon a thong to encircle the waist. In its
most elaborate and formal style the pa-ú consisted of a strip
of fine tapa several yards long and of width to reach nearly
to the knees. It was often delicately tinted or printed, as
to its outer part, with stamped figures. The part of the tapa
skirt thus printed, like the outer, decorative one in a set
of tapa bed-sheets, was termed the kilohana.

The pa-ú worn by the danseuse, when of tapa, was often of
such volume as to balloon like the skirt of a coryphée. To
put it on was quite an art, and on that account, if not on
the score of modesty, a portion of the halau, was screened
off and devoted to the use of the females as a dressing room,
being known as the unu-lau-koa, and to this place they
repaired as soon as the kumu gave the signal for dressing.

The hula pa-ú of the women was worn in addition to that of
daily life; the hula pa-ú of the men, a less pretentious
affair, was worn outside the malo, and in addition to it.

The method of girding on the pa-ú was peculiar. Beginning at
the right hip—some say the left—a free end was allowed to
hang quite to the knee; then, passing across the back,
rounding the left hip, and returning by way of the abdomen to
the starting point, another circuit of the waist was
accomplished; and, a reverse being made, the garment was
secured by passing the bight of the tapa beneath the hanging
folds of the pa-ú from below upward until it slightly
protruded above the border of the garment at the waist. This
second end was thus brought to hang down the hip alongside of
the first free end; an arrangement that produced a most
decorative effect.

The Hawaiians, in their fondness for giving personal names to
inanimate objects, named the two free ends (apua) of the
pa-ú respectively Ku-kápu-úla-ka-láni and Léle-a-mahu’i.

According to another method, which was simpler and more
commonly employed, the piece was folded sidewise and, being
gathered into pleats, a cord was inserted the length of the
fold. The cord was passed about the waist, knotted at the
hip, and thus held the garment secure.

Page 51

While the girls are making their simple toilet and donning
their unique, but scanty, costume, the kumu, aided by others,
soothes the impatience of the audience and stimulates their
imagination by cantillating a mele that sets forth in
grandiloquent imagery the praise of the pa-ú.

Oli Pa-ú

Footnote 92:
(return) Kikepa. The bias, the one-sided slant given
the pa-ú by tucking it in at one side, as previously
described.

Footnote 93:
(return) Imu. An oven; an allusion to the heat and
passion of the part covered by the pa-ú.

Footnote 94:
(return) Hu’a. Foam; figurative of the fringe at the
border of the pa-ú.

Footnote 95:
(return) Kuina. A term applied to the five sheets that
were stitched together (kui) to make a set of bed-clothes.
Five turns also, it is said, complete a pa-ú.

Footnote 96:
(return) Pali no Kupe-Hau. Throughout the poem the pa-ú
is compared to a pali, a mountain wall. Kupe-hau is a
precipitous part of Wai-pi’o valley.

Footnote 97:
(return) Hono-kane. A valley near Wai-pi’o. Here it is
personified and said to do the work on the pa-ú.

Footnote 98:
(return) Manú. A proper name given to this pa-ú.

Footnote 99:
(return)

Kau-kini. The name of a hill back of
Lahaina-luna, the traditional residence of a kahuna named
Lua-hoo-moe, whose two sons were celebrated for their manly
beauty. Ole-pau, the king of the island Maui, ordered his
retainer, Lua-hoo-moe, to fetch for his eating some young
u-a’u, a sea-bird that nests and rears its young in the
mountains. These young birds are esteemed a delicacy. The
kahuna, who was a bird-hunter, truthfully told the king that
it was not the season for the young birds; the parent birds
were haunting the ocean. At this some of the king’s boon
companions, moved by ill-will, charged the king’s mountain
retainer with suppressing the truth, and in proof they
brought some tough old birds caught at sea and had them
served for the king’s table. Thereupon the king, not
discovering the fraud, ordered that Lua-hoo-moe should be put
to death by fire. The following verses were communicated to
the author as apropos of Kau-kini, evidently the name of a
man:

Ike ia Kau-kini, he lawaia manu.

He upena ku’u i ka noe i Poha-kahi,

Ua hoopulu ia i ka ohu ka kikepa;

Ke na’i la i ka luna a Kea-auwana;

Ka uahi i ke ka-peku e hei ai ka manu o Pu-o-alii.

O ke alii wale no ka’u i makemake

Ali’a la, ha’o, e!

[Translation.]

Behold Kau-kini, a fisher of birds;

Net spread in the mist of Poha-kahi,

That is soaked by the sidling fog.

It strives on the crest of Koa-auwana.

Smoke traps the birds of Pu-o-alii.

It’s only the king that I wish:

But stay now—I doubt.

Footnote 100:
(return) Auwana. Said to be an eminence on the flank of
Haleakala, back of Ulupalakua.

Footnote 101:
(return) Apua. A place on Hawaii, on Maui, on Oahu, on
Kauai, and on Molokai.

Footnote 102:
(return) Mama ula ia ka malua ula. The malua-ula was a
variety of tapa that was stained with hili kukui (the
root-bark of the kukui tree). The ripe kukui nut was chewed
into a paste and mingled with this stain. Mama ula refers
to this chewing. The malua ula is mentioned as a foil to
the pa-ú, being a cheap tapa.

Footnote 103:
(return) I. A contracted form of ti or ki, the
plant or, as in this case, the leaf of the ti, the Dracæna
(pl. V). Liloa, the father Of Umi, used it to cover himself
after his amour with the mother of Umi, having given his malo
in pledge to the woman. Umi may have used this same leaf as a
substitute for the malo while in the wilderness of
Laupahoehoe, hiding away from his brother, King Hakau.

Footnote 104:
(return) Oloná. A strong vegetable fiber sometimes
added to tapa to give it strength. The fibers of olona in
the fabric of the pa-ú are compared to the runnels and
brooklets of Waihilau.

Footnote 105:
(return) Wai-hilau. Name applied to the water that
drips in a cave in Puna. It is also the name of a stream in
Wai-pi’o valley, Hawaii.

Footnote 106:
(return) Kilo-hana. The name given the outside,
ornamented, sheet of a set (kuina) of five tapas used as
bed-clothing. It was also applied to that part of a pa-ú
which was decorated with figures. The word comes from
kilohi, to examine critically, and hana, to work, and
therefore means an ornamental work.

Footnote 107:
(return) Ohe. Bamboo. In this case the stamp, made from
bamboo, used to print the tapa.

Footnote 108:
(return) Alá. The hard, dark basalt of which the
Hawaiian ko’i, adz, is made; any pebble, or small
water-worn stone, such as would be used to hold in place the
pa-ú while spread out to dry.

Footnote 109:
(return) Kane-poha-ka’a. Kane-the-hail-sender. The
great god Kane was also conceived of as Kane-hekili, the
thunderer; Kane-lulu-honua, the earthquake-sender, etc.

Footnote 110:
(return) Wai-manu and Wai-pi’o are neighboring
valleys.

Footnote 111:
(return) Ko-a’e-kea. A land in Wai-pi’o valley.

Footnote 112:
(return) Mo’ ke kihi. Mo’ is a contracted form of
moku.

Footnote 113:
(return) Hoaka. The name of the moon in its second day,
or of the second day of the Hawaiian month; a crescent.

Footnote 114:
(return) O awili o Malu-á.

The most direct and evident
sense of the word awili is to wrap. It probably means the
wrapping of the pa-ú about the loins; or it may mean the
movable, shifty action of the pa-ú caused by the lively
actions of the dancer. The expression Malw-á may be taken
from the utterance of the king’s ilamuku (constable or
sheriff) or other official, who, in proclaiming a tabu, held
an idol in his arms and at the same time called out Kapu,
o-o! The meaning is that the pa-ú, when wrapped about the
woman’s loins, laid a tabu on the woman. The old Hawaiian
consulted on the meaning of this passage quoted the
following, which illustrates the fondness of his people for
endless repetitions and play upon words:

Awiliwili i ka hale
¹¹⁹ o ka lauwili, e.

He lauwili ka makanl, he Kaua-ula,
¹²⁰

I hoapaapa i ka hale o ka lauwili, e:

[Translation.]

Unstable the house of the shifty man,

Fickle as the wind Kaua-ula.

Treachery lurks in the house of Unstable.

Footnote 115:
(return) Kaupoku. A variant of the usual form, which is
kaupaku, the ridgepole of a house, its apex. The pa-ti
when, worn takes the shape of a grass house, which has the
form of a haystack.

Footnote 116:
(return) Ula ka pali. Red shows the pali, i. e., the
side hill. This is a euphemism for some accident by which the
pa-ú has been displaced, and an exposure of the person has
taken place, as a result of which the boys scream and even
the sea-bird, the a’o, shrieks itself hoarse.

Footnote 117:
(return) A’o. A sea-bird, whose raucous voice is heard
in the air at night at certain seasons.

Footnote 118:
(return) Hi’i-lawe. A celebrated waterfall in Wai-pi’o
valley, Hawaii.

Footnote 119:
(return) Primitive meaning, house; second, the body as
the house of the soul.

Footnote 120:
(return) Kaua-ula. A strong wind that shifted from one
point to another, and that blew, often with great violence,
at Lahaina, Maul. The above triplet was often quoted by the
chiefs of olden time apropos of a person who was fickle in
love or residence. As the old book has it, “The double-minded
man is unstable in all his ways.” (O ke kanáka lolilua ka
manao lauwili kona mau aoao a pau.)

This is a typical Hawaiian poem of the better sort, keyed in
a highly imaginative strain. The multitude of specific
allusions to topographical names make it difficult to
Page 54 translate it intelligently to a foreign mind. The poetical
units are often so devised that each new division takes its
clue from the last word of the previous verse, on the
principle of “follow your leader,” a capital feature in
Hawaiian poetry.

[Translation.]

Pa-ú Song

Footnote 121:
(return) Umi. It was Liloa, the father of Umi, who
covered himself with a ti leaf instead of a malo after the
amour that resulted in the birth of Umi. His malo he had
given as a pledge to the woman, who became the mother of
Umi.

The girls of the olapa, their work in the tiring-room
completed, lift their voices in a spirited song, and with a
lively motion pass out into the hall to bloom before the
waiting assembly in the halau in all the glory of their
natural charms and adornments:

Oli

[Translation.]

Tiring Song.

Footnote 122:
(return) Lau (archaic). Four hundred.

Page 56

The answering song, led by the kumu, is in the same
flamboyant strain:

Oli

[Translation.]

Song

Footnote 123:
(return) Mahu’ilani. A poetlcal name for the right
hand; this the olapa, the dancing girls, lifted in
extension as they entered the halau from, the dressing room.
The left hand was termed Kaohi-lani.

Footnote 124:
(return) Kauna-lewa. The name of a celebrated grove of
coconuts at Kekaha, Kauai, near the residence of the late Mr.
Knudsen.

After the ceremony of the pa-ú came that of the lei, a wreath
to crown the head and another for the neck and shoulders. It
was not the custom in the old times to overwhelm the body
with floral decorations and to blur the outlines of the
figure to the point of disfigurement; nor was every flower
that blows acceptable as an offering. The gods were jealous
and nice in their tastes, pleased, only with flowers
indigenous to the soil—the ilima (pl. VI), the lehua, the
maile, the ie-ie, and the like (see pp. 19, 20). The ceremony
was quickly accomplished. As the company knotted the garlands
about head or neck, they sang:

Oli Lei

[Translation.]

Wreath Song

Tradition tells a pathetic story (p. 212) in narrating an
incident touching the occasion on which this song first was
sung.

Footnote 125:
(return) Wahine. The woman, Pele.

Page 57

IX.—THE HULA ALA’A-PAPA

Every formal hula was regarded by the people of the olden
time as a sacred and religious performance (tabu); but all
hulas were not held to be of equal dignity and rank
(hanohano). Among those deemed to be of the noblest rank
and honor was the ala’a-papa. In its best days this was a
stately and dignified performance, comparable to the
old-fashioned courtly minuet.

We shall observe in this hula the division of the performers
into two sets, the hoopa’a and the olapa. Attention will
naturally bestow itself first on the olapa, a division of the
company made up of splendid youthful figures, young men,
girls, and women in the prime of life. They stand a little
apart and in advance of the others, the right hand extended,
the left resting upon the hip, from which hangs in swelling
folds the pa-ú. The time of their waiting for the signal to
begin the dance gives the eye opportunity to make deliberate
survey of the forms that stand before us.

The figures of the men are more finely proportioned, more
statuesque, more worthy of preservation in marble or bronze
than those of the women. Only at rare intervals does one find
among this branch of the Polynesian race a female shape which
from crown to sole will satisfy the canons of
proportion—which one carries in the eye. That is not to say,
however, that the artistic eye will not often meet a shape
that appeals to the sense of grace and beauty. The springtime
of Hawaiian womanly beauty hastes away too soon. Would it
were possible to stay that fleeting period which ushers in
full womanhood!

One finds himself asking the question to what extent the
responsibility for this overthickness of leg and
ankle—exaggerated in appearance, no doubt, by the ruffled
anklets often worn—this pronounced tendency to the growth of
that degenerate weed, fat, is to be explained by the standard
of beauty which held sway in Hawaii’s courts and for many
ages acted as a principle of selection in the physical
molding of the Hawaiian female.

The prevailing type of physique among the Hawaiians, even
more marked in the women than in the men, is the short and
thick, as opposed to the graceful and slender. One does
occasionally find delicacy of modeling in the young and
immature; but with adolescence fatness too often comes to
blur the outline.

The hoopa’a, who act as instrumentalists, very naturally
maintain a position between sitting and kneeling, the better
Page 58 to enable them, to handle that strangely effective drumlike
instrument, the ipu, the one musical instrument used as an
accompaniment in this hula. The ipu is made from the bodies
of two larger pear-shaped calabashes of unequal sizes, which
are joined together at their smaller ends in such a manner as
to resemble a figure-of-eight. An opening is left at the top
of the smaller calabash to increase the resonance. In moments
of calm the musicians allow the body to rest upon the heels;
as the action warms they lift themselves to such height as
the bended knee will permit.

The ala’a-papa is a hula of comparatively moderate action.
While the olapa employ hands, feet, and body in gesture and
pose to illustrate the meaning and emotion of the song, the
musicians mark the time by lifting and patting with the right
hand the ipu each holds in the left hand. If the action of
the play runs strong and stirs the emotions, each hoopa’a
lifts his ipu wildly, fiercely smites it, then drops it on
the padded rest in such manner as to bring out its deep
mysterious tone.

At a signal from the kumu, who sits with the hoopa’a, the
poo-pua’a, leader of the olapa, calls the mele (kahea i ka
mele)—that is, he begins its recitation—in a tone
differing but little from that of ordinary conversation, a
sing-song recitation, a vocalization less stilted and less
punctilious than that usually employed in the utterance of
the oli or mele. The kumu, the leader of the company, now
joins in, mouthing his words in full observance of the mele
style. His manner of cantillation may be either what may be
called the low relief, termed ko’i-honua, or a pompous
alto-relievo style, termed ai-ha’a. This is the signal for
the whole company to chime in, in the same style as the kumu.
The result, as it seems to the untutored ear, is a confusion
of sounds like that of the many-tongued roar of the ocean.

The songs cantillated for the hula ala’a-papa were many and
of great variety. It seems to have been the practice for the
kumu to arrange a number of mele, or poetical pieces, for
presentation in the hula in such order as pleased him. These
different mele, thus arranged, were called pale,
compartments, or mahele, divisions, as if they were
integral parts of one whole, while in reality their relation
to one another was only that of the juxtaposition imposed
upon them by the kumu.

The poetical pieces first to be presented were communicated
to the author as mahele, divisions—hardly cantos—in the
sense above defined. They are, however, distinct poems,
though there chances to run through them all a somewhat
similar motive. The origin of many of these is referred to a
past so remote that tradition assigns them to what the
Hawaiians call the wa po, the night of tradition, or they
say of them, no ke akua mai, they are from the gods. It
Page 59 matters not how faithful has been the effort to translate
these poems, they will not be found easy of comprehension.
The local allusions, the point of view, the atmosphere that
were in the mind of the savage are not in our minds to-day,
and will not again be in any mind on earth; they defy our
best efforts at reproduction. To conjure up the ghostly
semblance of these dead impalpable things and make them live
again is a problem that must be solved by each one with such
aid from the divining rod of the imagination as the reader
can summon to his help.

Now for the play, the song:

Mele no Ka Hula Alá’a-papa

MAHELE-HELE I

PAUKU 1

[Translation.]

Song for the Hula Alá’a-papa.

CANTO I

STANZA 1

This song is from the story of Hiiaka on her journey to Kauai
to bring the handsome prince, Lohiau, to Pele. The region is
that on the windward, Koolau, side of Oahu.

Footnote 126:
(return) Ilina. A sink, a place where a stream sinks
into the earth or sand.

Page 60

PAUKU 2

The lines from, the fourth to the ninth in this stanza
(pauku) represent a dialogue between two lovers.

[Translation.]

STANZA 2

PAUKU 3

(Ko’i-honua)

Footnote 127:
(return) Olelo. To speak, to converse; here used
figuratively to mean that the place is lonely, has no view of
the ocean, looks only to the sky. “Looks that commerce with
the sky.”

Footnote 128:
(return) Ku-kani-loko. A land in Waialua, Oahu, to
which princesses resorted in the olden times at the time of
childbirth, that their offspring might have the distinction
of being an alii kapu, a chief with a tabu.

Footnote 129:
(return) Hale House; a familiar euphemism of the human
body.

Footnote 130:
(return) Kea-au. An ahu-pua’a, small division of
land, in Puna adjoining Hilo, represented as sheltering Hilo
on that side.

Footnote 131:
(return) Waiakea. A river in Hilo, and the land through
which it flows.

Footnote 132:
(return) Hana-kahi. A land on the Hamakua side of Hilo,
also a king whose name was a synonym for profound peace.

Footnote 133:
(return) Olo-kea. To be invited or pulled many ways at
once; distracted.

Footnote 134:
(return) Lele-iwi. A cape on the north side of Hilo.

Footnote 135:
(return) Maka-hana-loa. A cape.

Footnote 136:
(return) Kaele-papa. A large, round, hollowed board on
which to pound taro in the making of poi. The poi-board was
usually long and oval.

Footnote 137:
(return) Kaele. In this connection the meaning is
surrounded, encompassed by.

Footnote 138:
(return) Waiau. The name given to the stretch of
Wailuku river near its mouth.

Footnote 139:
(return) Moku-pane. The cape between the mouth of the
Wailuku river and the town of Hilo.

Footnote 140:
(return) Wai-anue-nue. Rainbow falls and the river that
makes the leap.

Footnote 141:
(return) Kolo-pule-pule. Another branch of the Wailuku
stream.

Footnote 142:
(return) Pili-kau. To hang low, said of a cloud.

Footnote 143:
(return) Haili. A region in the inland, woody, part of
Hilo.

Footnote 144:
(return) Pa-ieie. A well-wooded part of Hilo, once much
resorted to by bird-hunters; a place celebrated in Hawaiian
song.

Footnote 145:
(return) Mokau-lele. A wild, woody region In the
interior of Hilo.

Footnote 146:
(return) Malua. Name given to a wind from a northerly
or northwesterly direction on several of the islands. The
full form is Malua-lua.

Footnote 147:
(return) Pu’u-eo. A village in the Hilo district near
Puna.

Footnote 148:
(return) Iwi-honua. Literally a bone of the earth: a
projecting rock or a shoal; if in the water, an object to be
avoided by the surf-rider. In this connection see note e,
p. 36.

[Translation.]

STANZA 3

(With distinct utterance)

PAUKU 4

(Ai-ha’a)

[Translation.]

STANZA 4

(Bombastic style)

This poem is taken from the story of Hiiaka. On her return
from the journey to fetch Lohiau she found that her sister
Pele had treacherously ravaged with fire Puna, the district
that contained her own dear woodlands. The description given
in the poem is of the resulting desolation.

PAUKA 5

Footnote 149:
(return) Hale-kai. A wild mountain, glen back of
Hanalei valley, Kauai.

Footnote 150:
(return) Ma’alewa. An aerial root that formed a sort
of ladder by which one climbed the mountain steeps; literally
a shaking sling.

Footnote 151:
(return) Moana-nui-ka-lehua. A female demigod that came
from the South (Ku-kulu-o-Kahiki) at about the same
mythical period as that of Pele’s arrival—If not in her
company—and who was put in charge of a portion of the
channel that lies between Kauai and Oahu. This channel was
generally termed Ie-ie-waena and Ie-ie-waho. Here the
name Moana-nui-ka-lehua seems to be used to indicate the
sea as well as the demigoddess, whose dominion it was.
Ordinarily she appeared as a powerful fish, but she was
capable of assuming the form of a beautiful woman (mermaid?).
The title lehua was given her on account of her womanly
charms.

Footnote 152:
(return) Mali’o. Apparently another form of the word
malino, calm; at any rate it has the same meaning.

Footnote 153:
(return) Lehua. An allusion to the ill-fated’ young
woman Hopoe, who was Hiiaka’s intimate friend. The allusion
is amplified in the next line.

Footnote 154:
(return) Hopoe-lehua. The lehua tree was one of the
forms in which Hopoe appeared, and after her death, due to
the jealous rage of Pele, she was turned into a charred lehua
tree which stood on the coast subject to the beating of the
surf.

Footnote 155:
(return) Maka’u ka lehua i ke kanaka. Another version
has it Maka’u ke kanaka i ka lehua; Man fears the lehua.
The form here used is perhaps an ironical allusion to man’s
fondness not only to despoil the tree of its scarlet flowers,
but womanhood, the woman it represented.

Footnote 156:
(return) Kea-au. Often shortened in pronunciation to
Ke-au, a fishing village in Puna near Hilo town. It now has
a landing place for small vessels.

Footnote 157:
(return) Hoolono. To call, to make an uproar, to spread
a report.

Footnote 158:
(return) Ia hoo-nee-nee ia pili mai. A very peculiar
figure of speech. It Is as if the poet personified, the act
of two lovers snuggling up close to each other. Compare with
this the expression No huli mai, used by another poet in
the thirteenth line of the lyric given on p. 204. The motive
is the same in each case.

The author of this poem of venerable age is not known. It is
spoken of as belonging to the wa po, the twilight of
tradition. It is represented to be part of a mele taught to
Hiiaka by her friend and preceptress in the hula, Hopoe.
Hopoe is often called Hopoe-wahine. From internal evidence
one can see that it can not be in form the same as was given
to Hiiaka by Hopoe; it may have been founded on the poem of
Hopoe. If so, it has been modified.

[Translation.]

STANZA 5

The last five verses, which sound like a love song, may
possibly be a modern addition to this old poem. The sentiment
they contain is comparable to that expressed in the Song of
Welcome on page 39:

Page 65

MAHELE-HELE II

Footnote 159:
(return) Hi’u-o-lani. A very blind phrase. Hawaiians
disagree as to its meaning. In the author’s opinion, it is a
word referring to the conjurer’s art.

Footnote 160:
(return) Ua o Hilo. Hilo is a very rainy country. The
name Hilo seems to be used here as almost a synonym of
violent rain. It calls to mind the use of the word Hilo to
signify a strong wind:

Pa mai, pa mai,

Ka makani a Hilo!
¹⁶⁸

Waiho ka ipu iki,

Homai ka ipu nui!

[Translation.]

Blow, blow, thou wind of Hilo!

Leave the little calabash,

Bring on the big one!

Footnote 161:
(return) Pua-lani. The name of a deity who took the
form of the rosy clouds of morning.

Footnote 162:
(return) Mahele ana. Literally the dividing; an
allusion to the fact, it is said, that in Hilo a rain-cloud,
or rain-squall, as it came up would often divide and a part
of it turn off toward Puna at the cape named Lele-iwi,
one-half watering, in the direction of the present town, the
land known as Hana-kahi.

Footnote 163:
(return) Hana-kahi. Look at note f, p. 60.

Footnote 164:
(return) Mauna-ole. According to one authority this
should be Mauna-Hilo. Verses 13, 14, 16, and 17 are difficult
of translation. The play on the words ku a, standing at, or
standing by, and kua, the back; also on the word kowa, a
gulf or strait; and the repetition of the word mauna,
mountain—all this is carried to such an extent as to be
quite unintelligible to the Anglo-Saxon mind, though full of
significance to a Hawaiian.

Footnote 165:
(return) A’e. A strong wind that prevails in Ka-u. The
same word also means to step on, to climb. This
double-meaning gives the poet opportunity for a euphuistic
word-play that was much enjoyed by the Hawaiians. The
Hawaiians of the present day are not quite up to this sort of
logomachy.

Footnote 166:
(return) Kaili-ki’i. The promontory that shelters the
cove Ka-hewa-hewa.

Footnote 167:
(return) Ka-hea-hea. The name of the cove
Ka-hewa-hewa, above mentioned, is here given in a softened
form obtained by the elision of the letter w.

Footnote 168:
(return) Hilo, or Whiro, as in the Maori, was a great
navigator.

[Translation.]

CANTO II

“What name?” was asked of the old Hawaiian.

“A god,” said he.

“How is that? A mele-inoa celebrates the name and glory of a
king, not of a god.”

Page 67

His answer was, “The gods composed the mele; men did not
compose it.”

Like an old-time geologist, he solved the puzzle of a novel
phenomenon by ascribing it to God.

MAHELE III

(Ai-ha’a)

[Translation.]

CANTO III

(Bombastic style)

Footnote 169:
(return) Koa’e-kea, Pueo hulu-nui. Steep declivities,
pali, on the side of Waipio valley, Hawaii. Instead of
inserting these names, which would be meaningless without an
explanation, the author has given a literal translation of
the names themselves, thus getting a closer insight into the
Hawaiian thought.

Footnote 170:
(return) A’e. The precipices rise one above another
like the steps of a stairway, climbing, climbing up, though
the probable intent of the poet is to represent some one as
climbing the ascent.

Footnote 171:
(return) Ha’i. Short for Ha’ina-kolo; a woman about
whom there is a story of tragic adventure. Through eating
when famished of some berries in an unceremonious way she
became distraught and wandered about for many months until
discovered by the persistent efforts of her husband. The pali
which she climbed was named after her.

Footnote 172:
(return) Maka’u-kiu. The name of a famous huge shark
that was regarded with reverential fear.

Footnote 173:
(return) Pohaku lele. In order to determine whether a
shark was present, it was the custom, before going into the
clear water of some of these coves, to throw rocks into the
water in order to disturb the monster and make his presence
known.

Footnote 174:
(return) Big-leaf. A literal translation of Lau-nui.
Laupahoehoe, Flat-leaf.

MAHELE IV

This mele, Hole Waimea, is also sung in connection with the
hula ipu.

Footnote 175:
(return) Hole. To rasp, to handle rudely, to caress
passionately. Waimea is a district and village on Hawaii.

Footnote 176:
(return) Kipu’u-pu’u. A cold wind from Mauna-Kea that
blows at Waimea.

Footnote 177:
(return) Mahiki. A woodland in Waimea, in mythological
times haunted by demons and spooks.

Footnote 178:
(return) Mala-nai. The poetical name of a wind,
probably the trade wind; a name much used in Hawaiian
sentimental poetry.

Footnote 179:
(return) Oha-wai. A water hole that is filled by
dripping; an important source of supply for drinking purposes
in certain parts of Hawaii.

Footnote 180:
(return) Pua o Koaie, The koaie is a tree that grows in
the wilds, the blossom of which is extremely fragrant. (Not
the same as that subspecies of the koa (Acacia koa) which
Hillebrand describes and wrongly spells koaia. Here a
euphemism for the delicate parts.)

Footnote 181:
(return) Koolau, or, full form, Ko-kao-lau. Described
by Doctor Hillebrand as Kokolau, a wrong spelling. It has a
pretty yellow flower, a yellow eye—maka lena—as the song
has it. Here used tropically. (This is the plant whose leaf
is sometimes used as a substitute for tea.)

Footnote 182:
(return) Moolau. An expression used figuratively to
mean a woman, more especially her breasts. The term
Huli-lau, is also used, in a slang way, to signify the
breasts of a woman, the primitive meaning being a calabash.

Footnote 183:
(return) Pili. To touch; touched. This was the word
used in the forfeit-paying love game, kilu, when the player
made a point by hitting the target of his opponent with his
kilu. (For further description see p. 235.)

Page 69

The song above given, the translation of which is to follow,
belongs to historic times, being ascribed to King
Liholiho—Kamehameha II—who died in London July 13, 1824, on
his visit to England. It attained great vogue and still holds
its popularity with the Hawaiians. The reader will note the
comparative effeminacy and sentimentality of the style and
the frequent use of euphemisms and double-entendre. The
double meaning in a Hawaiian mele will not always be evident
to one whose acquaintance with the language is not intimate.
To one who comes to it from excursions in Anglo-Saxon poetry,
wandering through its “meadows trim with daisies pied,” the
sly intent of the Hawaiian, even when pointed out, will, no
doubt, seem an inconsequential thing and the demonstration of
it an impertinence, if not a fiction to the imagination. Its
euphemisms in reality have no baser intent than the euphuisms
of Lyly, Ben Jonson, or Shakespeare.

[Translation.]

Song—Hole Waimea

PART IV

PAUKU 2

Page 70

[Translation.]

STANZA 2

The poem above given from beginning to end is figurative, a
piece of far-fetched, enigmatical symbolism in the lower
plane of human nature.

PAUKU 3

[Translation.]

STANZA 3

Footnote 184:
(return) Po-lolo. A secret word, like a cipher, made up
for the occasion and compounded of two words, po, night,
and loloa, long, the final a, of loloa being dropped.
This form of speech was called kepakepa, and was much used
by the Hawaiians in old times.

Footnote 185:
(return) Ulu-mano. A violent wind which blows by night
only on the western side of Hawaii. Kamehameha with a company
of men was once wrecked by this wind off Nawawa; a whole
village was burned to light them ashore. (Dictionary of the
Hawaiian Language, by Lorrin Andrews.)

Footnote 186:
(return) Walu-ihe a ke A’e. The A’e is a violent wind
that is described as blowing from different points of the
compass in succession; a circular storm. Walu-ihe—eight
spears—was a name applied to this same wind during a certain
portion of its circuitous range, covering at least eight
different points, as observed by the Hawaiians. It was well
fitted, therefore, to serve as a figure descriptive of eight
different lovers, who follow each other in quick succession,
in the favors of the same wanton.

Footnote 187:
(return) Ho-Wo The name of a wind, but of an entirely
different character from those above mentioned.

Footnote 188:
(return) Hana-kahi. (See note f, p. 60.)

Page 71

This is not a line-for-line translation; that the author
found infeasible. Line 8 of the English represents line 7 of
the Hawaiian. Given more literally, it might be, “He’ll shake
the buttocks of Hilo’s forty thousand.”

The metaphor of this song is disjointed, but hot with the
primeval passions of humanity.

PAUKU 4

[Translation.]

STANZA 4

The following account is taken from the Polynesian Researches
of the Rev. William Ellis, the well-known English missionary,
who visited these islands in the years 1822 and 1823, and
whose recorded observations have been of the highest value in
preserving a knowledge of the institutions of ancient Hawaii:

In the afternoon, a party of strolling musicians and dancers
arrived at Kairua. About four o’clock they came, followed by
crowds of people, and arranged themselves on a fine sandy
beach in front of one of the governor’s houses, where they
exhibited a native dance, called hura araapapa.

The five musicians first seated themselves in a line on the
ground, and spread a piece of folded cloth on the sand before
them. Their instrument was a large calabash, or rather two,
one of an oval shape about three feet high, the other
perfectly round, very neatly fastened to it, having also an
aperture about three inches in diameter at the top. Each
musician held his instrument before him with both hands, and
produced his music by striking it on the ground, where he had
laid a piece of cloth, and beating it with his fingers, or
the palms of his hands. As soon as they began to sound their
calabashes, the dancer, a young man about the middle stature,
advanced through the opening crowd.

Page 72

His jet-black hair hung in loose and flowing ringlets on his
naked shoulders; his necklace was made of a vast number of
strings of nicely braided human hair, tied together behind,
while a paraoa (an ornament made of a whale’s tooth) hung
pendent from it on his breast; his wrists were ornamented
with bracelets formed of polished tusks of the hog, and his
ankles with loose buskins, thickly set with dog’s teeth, the
rattle of which, during the dance, kept time with the music
of the calabash drum. A beautiful yellow tapa was tastefully
fastened round his loins, reaching to his knees. He began his
dance in front of the musicians, and moved forward and
backwards, across the area, occasionally chanting the
achievements of former kings of Hawaii. The governor sat at
the end of the ring, opposite to the musicians, and appeared
gratified with the performance, which continued until the
evening. (Vol. IV, 100-101, London, Fisher, Son & Jackson,
1831.)

NOTE BY THE AUTHOR.—At the time of Mr. Ellis’ visit to
Hawaii the orthography of the Hawaiian language was still in
a formative stage, and it is said that his counsels had
influence in shaping it. His use of r instead of l in the
words hula, alaapapa, and palaoa may, therefore, be
ascribed to the fact of his previous acquaintance with the
dialects of southern Polynesia, in which the sound of r to
a large extent substitutes that of l, and to the
probability that for that reason his ear was already attuned
to the prevailing southern fashion, and his judgment
prepossessed in that direction.

Page 73

X.—THE HULA PA-ÍPU, OR KUÓLO

The pa-ípu, called also the kuólo, was a hula of
dignified character, in which all the performers maintained
the kneeling position and accompanied their songs with the
solemn tones of the ípu (pl. vii), with which each one was
provided. The proper handling of this drumlike instrument in
concert with the cantillation of the mele made such demands
upon the artist, who was both singer and instrumentalist,
that only persons of the most approved skill and experience
were chosen to take part in the performance of this hula.

The manner of treating the ípu in this hula differed somewhat
from that employed in the ala’a-papa, being subdued and quiet
in that, whereas in the pa-ípu it was at times marked with
great vigor and demonstrativeness, so that in moments of
excitement and for the expression of passion, fierce joy, or
grief the ípu might be lifted on high and wildly brandished.
It thus made good its title as the most important instrument
of the Hawaiian orchestra.

In the pa-ípu, as in the hulas generally, while the actors
were sometimes grouped according to sex, they were quite as
often distributed indiscriminately, the place for the leader,
the kumu, being the center.

The vigor that marks the literary style of the mele now given
stamps it as belonging to the archaic period, which closed in
the early part of the eighteenth century, that century which
saw the white man make his advent in Hawaii. The poem deals
apparently with an incident in one of the migrations such as
took place during the period of intercourse between the North
and the South Pacific. This was a time of great stir and
contention, a time when there was much paddling and sailing
about and canoe-fleets, often manned by warriors, traversed
the great ocean in every direction. It was then that Hawaii
received many colonists from the archipelagoes that lie to
the southward.

Mele

(Ko’i-honua)

Footnote 189:
(return) Olopana. A celebrated king of Waipio valley,
Hawaii, who had to wife the famous beauty, Luukia. Owing to
misfortune, he sailed away to Kahiki, taking with him his
wife and his younger brother, Moikeha, who was his
puna-lua, settling in a land called Moa-ula-nui-akea.
Olopana probably ended his days in his new-found home, but
Moi-keha, heart-sick at the loss of Luukia’s favors, came
hack to Hawaii and became the progenitor of a line of
distinguished men, several of whom were famous navigators.
Exactly what incident in the life of Olopana is alluded to in
the sixth and preceding verses, the traditions that narrate
his adventures do not inform us.

Footnote 190:
(return) Hei kapu. An oracle; the place where the high
priest kept himself while consulting the deities of the
heiau. It was a small house erected on an elevated platform
of stones, and there he kept himself in seclusion at such
times as he sought to be the recipient of communications from
the gods.

Footnote 191:
(return) Hana-ka-ulani. A name applied to several
heiau (temples). The first one so styled, according to
tradition, was built at Hana, Maui, and another one at
Kaluanui, on Oahu, near the famous valley of Ka-liu-wa’a.
These heiau are said to have been built by the gods in the
misty past soon after landing on these shores. Was it to
celebrate their escape from perils by sea and enemies on
land, or was it in token of thankfulness to gods still higher
than themselves?

The author’s informant can not tell whether these followed
the fierce, strict cult of Kane or the milder cult of Lono.

Footnote 192:
(return) Hoo-mamao-lani. An epithet meaning remote in
the heavens, applied to an alii of very high rank.

Footnote 193:
(return) Keawe.

This is a name that belonged, to
several kings and a large family of gods—papa akua—all of
which gods are said to have come from Kahiki and to have
dated their origin from the Wa Po, the twilight of
antiquity. Among the demigods that were called Keawe may be
mentioned: (1) Keawe-huli, a prophet and soothsayer. (2)
Keawe-kilo-pono, a wise and righteous one, who loved
justice. (3) Keawe-hula-maemae. It was his function to
maintain purity and cleanliness; he was a devouring flame
that destroyed rubbish and all foulness. (4)
Keawe-ula-o-ka-lani. This was the poetical appellation,
given to the delicate flush of early morning. Apropos of this
the Hawaiians have the following quatrain, which they
consider descriptive not only of morning blush, but also of
the coming in of the reign of the gods:

O Keawe-ula-i-ka-lani,

O Keawe-liko-i-ka-lani,

O Ke’awe-uina-poha-i-Kahiki;

Hikl mai ana o Lono.

[Translation.]

Keawe-the-red-blush-of-dawn,

Keawe-the-bud-in-the-sky,

Keawe-thunder-burst-at-Kahiki:

Till Lono comes in to reign.

(5) Keawe-pa-makani. It was his function to send winds from
Kukulu-o-Kahiki, as well as from some other points. (6)
Keawe-ío-ío-moa. This god inspected the ocean tides and
currents, such as Au-miki and Au-ká. (7)
Keawe-i-ka-liko. He took charge of flowerbuds and tender
shoots, giving them a chance to develop. (8) Keawe-ulu-pu.
It was his function to promote the development and fruitage
of plants. (9) Keawe-lu-pua. He caused flowers to shed
their petals. (10) Keawe-opala. It was his thankless task
to create rubbish and litter by scattering the leaves of the
trees. (11) Keawe-hulu, a magician, who could blow a
feather into the air and see it at once become a bird with
power to fly away. (12) Keawe-nui-ka-ua-o-Hilo, a sentinel
who stood guard by night and by day to watch over all
creation. (13) Keawe-pulehu. He was a thief and served as
Page 75[Page 75] cook for the ods. There were gods of evil as well as of good
in this set. (14) Keawe-oili. He was gifted with the power
to convey and transfer evil, sickness, misfortune, and death.
(15) Keawe-kaili. He was a robber. (16) Keawe-aihue. He
was a thief. (17) Keuwe-mahilo. He was a beggar. He would
stand round while others were preparing food, doing honest
work, and plead with his eyes. In this way he often obtained
a dole. (18) Keawe-puni-pua’a. He was a glutton, very greedy
of pork; he was also called Keawe-ai-pua’a. (19)
Keawe-inoino. He was a sloven, unclean in all his ways.
(20) Keawe-ilio. The only title to renown of this
superhuman creature was his inordinate fondness for the flesh
of the dog. So far none of the superhuman heings mentioned
seemed fitted to the role of the Keawe of the text, who was
passionately fond of the sea. The author had given up in
despair, when one day, on repeating his inquiry in another
quarter, he was rewarded by learning of—(21)
Keawe-i-na-’kai. He was a resident of the region about the
southeastern point of Molokai, called Lae-ka-Ilio—Cape of
the Dog. He was extravagantly fond of the ocean and allowed
no weather to interfere with the indulgence of his penchant.
An epithet applied to him describes his dominating passion:
Keawe moe i ke kai o Kohakú, Keawe who sleeps in (or on)
the sea of Kohakú. It seems probable that this was the Keawe
mentioned in the twelfth and thirteenth lines of the mele.

The appellation Keawe seems to have served as a sort of
Jack among the demigods of the Hawaiian pantheon, on whom was
to be laid the burden of a mongrel host of virtues and vices
that were not assignable to the regular orthodox deities.
Somewhat in the same way do we use the name Jack as a
caption, for a miscellaneous lot of functions, as when we
speak of a “Jack-at-all-trades.”

[Translation.]

Song

(Distinct utterance)

Mele

PALE I

Page 76

[Translation.]

Song

CANTO I

The intricately twisted language of this mele is allegorical,
a rope whose strands are inwrought with passion, envy,
detraction, and abuse. In translating it one has to choose
between the poetic verbal garb and the esoteric meaning which
the bard made to lurk beneath the surface.

Mele

PALE II

[Translation.]

Song

CANTO II

The scene of this mele is laid on one of the little
bird-islands that lie to the northwest of Kauai. The iwa
bird, flying heavily to his nesting place in the wiry grass
(kala-pahee), symbolizes the flight of a man in his
deep-laden pirogue, abducting the woman of his love. The
screaming sea-birds that warn him off the island, represented
as watch-guards of the shark-god Kuhai-moana (whose reef is
still pointed out), figure the outcries of the parents and
friends of the abducted woman.

After the first passionate outburst (Puni’a iluna o ka
Halau-a-ola) things go more smoothly (ola, …). The
flight to covert from the storm, the cove at the base of
Le-hu-a, the shady groves, the scarlet pompons of the
lehua—the tree and the island have the same name—all these
things are to be interpreted figuratively as emblems of
woman’s physical charms and the delights of love-dalliance.

Mele

PALE III

(Ai-ha’a)

Page 78

[Translation.]

Song

CANTO III

(In turgid style)

The imagery of this mele sets forth the story of the fierce,
but fruitless, love-search of a chief, who is figured by the
Ulu-mano, a boisterous wind of Puna, Hawaii. The fragrance
of upland lehua (moani lehua, a’e la mauka, verse 3)
typifies the charms of the woman he pursues. The expression
kani lehua (verse 4), literally the sudden ending of a
rain-squall, signifies the man’s failure to gain his object.
The lover seeks to string the golden drupe of the pandanus
(halo), that he may wear them as a wreath about his neck
(uwalo); he is wounded by the teeth of the sword-leaves (o
ia i ka lau o ka hala, verse 5). More than this, he meets
powerful, concerted resistance (ke poo o ka hala o ke
aku’i, verse 6), offered by the compact groves of pandanus
that grow in the rough lava-shag (aku’i), typifying, no
doubt, the resistance made by the friends and retainers of
the woman. After all, he finds, or declares that he finds,
the hala fruit he had sought to gather and to wear as a lei
about his neck, to be spoiled, broken, fit only to litter the
road (loli ka mu’o o ka hala, verse 8; A helelei ka’pua, a
pili ke alanui, verse 9). In spite of his repulse and his
vilification of the woman, his passion, still feeds on the
thought of the one he has lost; her charms intoxicate his
imagination, even as the perfume of the hala bloom bewitches
the air of Pana-ewa (Pu ia Panaewa, ona-ona i ke ala, verse
10).

It is difficult to interpret verses 12 to 18 in harmony with
the story as above given. They may be regarded as a
Page 79 commentary on the passionate episode in the life of the
lover, looked at from the standpoint of old age, at a time
when passion still survives but physical strength is in
abeyance.

As the sugar-boiler can not extract from the stalk the last
grain of sugar, so the author finds it impossible in any
translation to express the full intent of these Hawaiian
mele.

Mele

PALE IV

Footnote 194:
(return) Wai oupe-kanaka. Man-fooling water; the
mirage.

Footnote 195:
(return) Lima-loa. The long-armed, the god of the
mirage, who made his appearance at Maná, Kauai.

Footnote 196:
(return) Poloai. To converse with, to have dealings
with one.

Footnote 197:
(return) Koolau-wahine. The sea-breeze at Mana. There
is truth as well as poetry in the assertion made in this
verse. The warm moist air, rising from the heated sands of
Maná, did undoubtedly draw in the cool breeze from the
ocean—a fruitful dalliance.

Footnote 198:
(return) Kino-lau. Having many (400) bodies, or
metamorphoses, said of Kawelo.

Footnote 199:
(return) Kawelo.

A sorcerer who lived in the region of
Maná. His favorite metamorphosis was into the form of a
shark. Even when in human form he retained the gills of a
fish and had the mouth of a shark at the back of his
shoulders, while to the lower part of his body were attached
the tail and flukes of a shark. To conceal these monstrous
appendages he wore over his shoulders a kihei of kapa and
allowed himself to be seen only while in the sitting posture.
He sometimes took the form of a worm, a moth, a caterpillar,
or a butterfly to escape the hands of his enemies. On land he
generally appeared as a man squatting, after the manner of a
Hawaiian gardener while weeding his garden plot.

The cultivated lands of Kawelo lay alongside the
much-traveled path to the beach where the people of the
neighborhood resorted to bathe, to fish, and to swim in the
ocean. He made a practice of saluting the passers-by and of
asking them, “Whither are you going?” adding the caution,
“Look to it that you are not swallowed head and tail by the
shark; he has not breakfasted yet” (E akahele oukou o pau
po’o, pau hi’u i ka manó; aohe i paina i kakahiaka o ka
manó). As soon as the traveler had gone on his way to the
ocean, Kawelo hastened to the sea and there assumed his
shark-form. The tender flesh of children was his favorite
food. The frequent utterance of the same caution, joined to
the great mortality among the children and youth who resorted
to the ocean at this place, caused a panic among the
residents. The parents consulted a soothsayer, who surprised
them with the information that the guilty one was none other
than the innocent-looking farmer, Kawelo. Instructed by the
soothsayer, the people made an immense net of great strength
and having very fine meshes. This they spread in the ocean at
the bathing place. Kawelo, when caught in the net, struggled
fiendishly to break away, but in vain. According to
directions, they flung the body of the monster into an
enormous oven which they had heated to redness, and supplied
with fresh fuel for five times ten days—elima anahulu. At
the end of that time there remained only gray ashes. The
prophet had commanded them that when this had been
accomplished they must fill the pit of the oven with dry
dirt; thus doing, the monster would never come to life. They
neglected this precaution. A heavy rain flooded the
country—the superhuman work of the sorcerer—and from the
moistened ashes sprang into being a swarm of lesser sharks.
From them have come the many species of shark that now infest
our ocean.

The house which once was Kawelo’s ocean residence is still
pointed out, 7 fathoms deep, a structure regularly built of
rocks.

Footnote 200:
(return) Maha-maha i’a. The gills or fins of a fish
such as marked Kawelo.

Footnote 201:
(return) Aona. A word of doubtful meaning; according
to one it means lucky. That expounder (T—— P——) says it
should, or-might be, haona; he instances the phrase iwi
paou, in which the word paoa has a similar, but not
identical, form and means lucky bone.

Footnote 202:
(return) Ka-maile. A place on Kauai where prevailed the
custom of throwing firebrands down the lofty precipice of
Nuololo. This amusement made a fine display at night. As the
fire-sticks fell they swayed and drifted in the breeze,
making it difficult for one standing below to premise their
course through the air and to catch one of them before it
struck the ground or the water, that being one of the objects
of the sport. When a visitor had accomplished this feat, he
would sometimes mark his flesh with the burning stick that he
might show the brand to his sweetheart as a token of his
fidelity.

[Translation.]

Song

CANTO IV

Mele

PALE V

(Ai-ha’a, a he Ko’i-honua paha)

[Translation.]

Song

CANTO V

(To be recited in bombastic style, or, it may be, distinctly)

Page 82

The heaping up of adulations, of which this mele is a capital
instance, was not peculiar to Hawaiian poetry. The Roman
Senate bestowed divinity on its emperors by vote; the
Hawaiian bard laureate, careering on his Pegasus, thought to
accomplish the same end by piling Ossa on Pelion with
high-flown phrases; and every loyal subject added his
contribution to the cairn that grew heavenward.

In Hawaii, as elsewhere, the times of royal debasement, of
aristocratic degeneracy, of doubtful or disrupted succession,
have always been the times of loudest poetic insistence on
birth-rank and the occasion for the most frenzied utterance
of high-sounding titles. This is a disease that has grown
with the decay of monarchy.

Applying this criterion to the mele above given, it may be
judged to be by no means a product wholly of the archaic
period. While certain parts, say from the first to the tenth
verses, inclusive, bear the mark of antiquity, the other
parts do not ring clear. It seems as if some poet of
comparatively modern times had revamped an old mele to suit
his own ends. Of this last part two verses were so glaringly
an interpolation that they were expunged from the text.

The effort to translate into pure Anglo-Saxon this vehement
outpour of high-colored phrases has made heavy demands on the
vocabulary and has strained the idioms of our speech
well-nigh to the point of protest.

In lines 1, 2, 4, 8, 14, and 23 the word Lani means a
prince or princess, a high chief or king, a heavenly one. In
lines 12, 13, 18, and 20 the same word lani means the
heavens, a concept in the Hawaiian mind that had some
far-away approximation to the Olympus of classic Greece.

Mele

Page 83

[Translation.]

Song

Footnote 203:
(return) In the original, He mau alualu ka, ha’i e
lawe, literally “Some skins for another to take.”

This song almost explains itself. It is the soliloquy of a
lover estranged from his mistress. Imagination is alive in
eye and ear to everything that may bring tidings of her, even
of her unhoped-for return. Sometimes he speaks as if
addressing the woman who has gone from him, or he addresses
himself, or he personifies some one who speaks to him, as in
the sixth line: “Your day has flown, …”

The memory of past vexation and anguish extorts the
philosophic remark, “No mortal goes scathless of love.” He
gives over the past, seeks consolation in a new
attachment—he dives, lu’u, into the great ocean, “deep
waters,” of love, at least in search of love. The old self
(selves), the old love, he declares to be only alualu,
empty husks.

He—it is evidently a man—sets forth the wealth of comfort,
opulence, that surrounds him in his new-found peace. The
scene, being laid in the land Kailua, Oahu—the place to
which the enchanted tree Maka-léi
²⁰⁴ was carried long ago,
from which time its waters abounded in fish—fish are
naturally the symbol of the opulence that now bless his life.
But, in spite of the new-found peace and prosperity that
attend him, there is a lonely corner in his heart; the old
question echoes in its vacuum, “Who’ll greet her with song?
who shall console?”

Footnote 204:
(return) Maka-léi. (See note b, p. 17.)

Page 84

Mele

[Translation.]

Song

A poem this full of local color. The plot of the story, as it
may be interpreted, runs somewhat as follows: While the man
of the house, presumably, is away, it would seem—fishing,
perhaps, in the waters of Ewa’s “shamrock lagoon”—the
mistress sports with a lover. The culprit impudently defends
himself with chaff and dust-throwing. The hoodlums, one of
whom is himself the sinner, have been blabbing, says he.
Page 85
His accuser points to the beaten down hina-hina grass as
evidence against him. At this the brazen-faced culprit
parries the stroke with a humorous euphemistic description,
in which he plays on the word hina, to fall. Such verbal
tilting in ancient Hawaii was practically a defense against a
charge of moral obliquity as decisive and legitimate as was
an appeal to arms in the times of chivalry. He
euphemistically speaks of the beaten herbage as the result of
his having tripped and fallen, at which, says he, the woman
smiled, that is she fell in with his proposals. He gives
himself away; but that doesn’t matter.

It requires some study to make out who is the speaker in the
tit-for-tat of the dialogue.

Mele

(Ai-ha’a)

[Translation.]

Song

(In turgid style)