The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai. S. N. Haleole

(or Polynesian) composer who would become a successful competitor in the fields of poetry, oratory, or disputation must store up in his memory the rather long series of names for persons, places, objects, or phases of nature which constitute the learning of the aspirant for mastery in the art of expression. He is taught, says one tale, "about everything in the earth and in the heavens"— that is, their names, their distinguishing characterstics. The classes of objects thus differentiated naturally are determined by the emotional interest attached to them, and this depends upon their social or economic value to the group.

      The social value of pedigree and property have encouraged genealogical and geographical enumeration. A long recitation of the genealogies of chiefs provides immense emotional satisfaction and seems in no way to overtax the reciter's memory. Missionaries tell us that "the Hawaiians will commit to memory the genealogical tables given in the Bible, and delight to repeat them as some of the choicest passages in Scripture." Examples of such genealogies are common; it is, in fact, the part of the reciter to preserve the pedigree of his chief in a formal genealogical chant.

      Such a series is illustrated in the genealogy embedded in the famous song to aggrandize the family of the famous chief Kualii, which carries back the chiefly line of Hawaii through 26 generations to Wakea and Papa, ancestors of the race.

      "Hulihonua the man,

       Keakahulilani the woman,

       Laka the man, Kepapaialeka the woman,"

      runs the song, the slight variations evidently fitting the sound to the movement of the recitative.

      In the eleventh section of the "Song of Creation" the poet says:

      She that lived up in the heavens and Piolani,

       She that was full of enjoyments and lived in the heavens,

       Lived up there with Kii and became his wife,

       Brought increase to the world;

      and he proceeds to the enumeration of her "increase":

      Kamahaina was born a man,

       Kamamule his brother,

       Kamaainau was born next,

       Kamakulua was born, the youngest a woman.

      Following this family group come a long series, more than 650 pairs of so-called husbands and wives. After the first 400 or so, the enumeration proceeds by variations upon a single name. We have first some 50 Kupo (dark nights)—"of wandering," "of wrestling," "of littleness," etc.; 60 or more Polo; 50 Liili; at least 60 Alii (chiefs); followed by Mua and Loi in about the same proportion.

      At the end of this series we read that—

      Storm was born, Tide was born,

       Crash was born, and also bursts of bubbles.

       Confusion was born, also rushing, rumbling shaking earth.

      So closes the "second night of Wakea," which, it is interesting to note, ends like a charade in the death of Kupololiilialiimualoipo, whose nomenclature has been so vastly accumulating through the 200 or 300 last lines. Notice how the first word Kupo of the series opens and swallows all the other five.

      Such recitative and, as it were, symbolic use of genealogical chants occurs over and over again. That the series is often of emotional rather than of historical value is suggested by the wordplays and by the fact that the hero tales do not show what is so characteristic of Icelandic saga—a care to record the ancestry of each character as it is introduced into the story. To be sure, they commonly begin with the names of the father and mother of the hero, and their setting; but in the older mythological tales these are almost invariably Ku and Hina, a convention almost equivalent to the phrase "In the olden time"; but, besides fixing the divine ancestry of the hero, carrying also with it an idea of kinship with those to whom the tale is related, which is not without its emotional value.

      Geographical names, although not enumerated to such an extent in any of the tales and songs now accessible, also have an important place in Hawaiian composition. In the Laieikawai 76 places are mentioned by name, most of them for the mere purpose of identifying a route of travel. A popular form of folk tale is the following, told in Waianae, Oahu: "Over in Kahuku lived a high chief, Kaho'alii. He instructed his son 'Fly about Oahu while I chew the awa; before I have emptied it into the cup return to me and rehearse to me all that you have seen.'" The rest of the tale relates the youth's enumeration of the places he has seen on the way.

      If we turn to the chants the suggestive use of place names becomes still more apparent. Dr. Hyde tells us (Hawaiian Annual, 1890, p. 79): "In the Hawaiian chant (mele) and dirge (kanikau) the aim seems to be chiefly to enumerate every place associated with the subject, and to give that place some special epithet, either attached to it by commonplace repetition or especially devised for the occasion as being particularly characteristic." An example of this form of reference is to be found in the Kualii chant. We read:

      Where is the battle-field

       Where the warrior is to fight?

       On the field of Kalena,

       At Manini, at Hanini,

       Where was poured the water of the god,

       By your work at Malamanui,

       At the heights of Kapapa, at Paupauwela,

       Where they lean and rest.

      In the play upon the words Manini and Hanini we recognize some rhetorical tinkering, but in general the purpose here is to enumerate the actual places famous in Kualii's history.

      At other times a place-name is used with allusive interest, the suggested incident being meant, like certain stories alluded to in the Anglo-Saxon "Beowulf," to set off, by comparison or contrast, the present situation. It is important for the poet to know, for example, that the phrase "flowers of Paiahaa" refers to the place on Kau, Hawaii, where love-tokens cast into the sea at a point some 20 or 30 miles distant on the Puna coast, invariably find their way to shore in the current and bring their message to watchful lovers.

      A third use of localization conforms exactly to our own sense of description. The Island of Kauai is sometimes visible lying off to the northwest of Oahu. At this side of the island rises the Waianae range topped by the peak Kaala. In old times the port of entry for travelers to Oahu from Kauai was the seacoast village of Waianae. Between it and the village of Waialua runs a great spur of the range, which breaks off abruptly at the sea, into the point Kaena. Kahuku point lies beyond Waialua at the northern extremity of the island. Mokuleia, with its old inland fishpond, is the first village to the west of Waialua. This is the setting for the following lines, again taken from the chant of Kualii, the translation varying only slightly from that edited by Thrum:

      O Kauai,

       Great Kauai, inherited from ancestors,

       Sitting in the calm of Waianae,

       A cape is Kaena,

       Beyond, Kahuku,

       A misty mountain back, where the winds meet, Kaala,

       There below sits Waialua,

       Waialua there,

       Kahala is a dish for Mokuleia,

       A fishpond for the shark roasted in ti-leaf,

       The tail of the shark is Kaena,

       The shark that goes along below Kauai,

       Below Kauai, thy land,

       Kauai O!

      The number of such place names to be stored in the reciter's memory is considerable. Not only are they applied in lavish profusion to beach, rock, headland, brook, spring, cave, waterfall, even to an isolated tree of historic interest, and distributed to less clearly marked small land areas to name individual holdings, but, because of the importance of the weather in the fishing and seagoing life of the islander, they are affixed to the winds, the rains, and the surf or "sea" of each locality. All these descriptive appellations the composer must employ to enrich