The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai. S. N. Haleole

there above Waahila.

      The coconut leaves are "the hair of the trees, their long locks." Kailua district is "a mat spread out narrow and gray."

      The classic example of the use of such metaphor in Hawaiian song is the famous passage in the Hauikalani in which chiefs at war are compared with a cockfight, the favorite Hawaiian pastime[5] being realistically described in allusion to Keoua's wars on Hawaii:

      Hawaii is a cockpit; the trained cocks fight on the ground.

       The chief fights—the dark-red cock awakes at night for battle;

       The youth fights valiantly—Loeau, son of Keoua.

       He whets his spurs, he pecks as if eating;

       He scratches in the arena—this Hilo—the sand of Waiolama.

      * * * * *

      He is a well-fed cock. The chief is complete,

       Warmed in the smokehouse till the dried feathers rattle,

       With changing colors, like many-colored paddles, like piles of

       polished Kahili.

       The feathers rise and fall at the striking of the spurs.

      Here the allusions to the red color and to eating suggest a chief. The feather brushes waved over a chief and the bright-red paddles of his war fleet are compared to the motion of a fighting cock's bright feathers, the analogy resting upon the fact that the color and the motion of rising and falling are common to all three.

      This last passage indicates the precise charm of Polynesian metaphor. It lies in the singer's close observation of the exact and characteristic truth which suggests the likeness, an exactness necessary to carry the allusion with his audience, and which he sharpens incessantly from the concrete facts before him. Kuapakaa sings:

      The rain in the winter comes slanting,

       Taking the breath away, pressing down the hair,

       Parting the hair in the middle.

      The chants are full of such precise descriptions, and they furnish the rich vocabulary of epithet employed in recalling a place, person, or object. Transferred to matters of feeling or emotion, they result in poetical comparisons of much charm. Sings Kuapakaa (Wise's translation):

      The pointed clouds have become fixed in the heavens,

       The pointed clouds grow quiet like one in pain before childbirth,

       Ere it comes raining heavily, without ceasing.

       The umbilicus of the rain is in the heavens,

       The streams will yet be swollen by the rain.

      [Illustration: A HAWAIIAN PADDLER (HENSHAW)]

      Hina's song of longing for her lost lover in Laieikawai should be compared with the lament of Laukiamanuikahiki when, abandoned by her lover, she sees the clouds drifting in the direction he has taken:

      The sun is up, it is up;

       My love is ever up before me.

       It is causing me great sorrow, it is pricking me in the side,

       For love is a burden when one is in love,

       And falling tears are its due.

      How vividly the mind enters into this analogy is proved, by its swift identification with the likeness presented. Originally this identification was no doubt due to ideas of magic. In romance, life in the open—in the forests or on the sea—has taken possession of the imagination. In the myths heroes climb the heavens, dwelling half in the air; again they are amphibian like their great lizard ancestors. In the Laieikawai, as in so many stories, note how much of the action takes place on or in the sea—canoeing, swimming, or surfing. In less humanized tales the realization is much more fantastic. To the Polynesian, mind such figurative sayings as "swift as a bird" and "swim like a fish" mean a literal transformation, his sense of identity being yet plastic, capable of uniting itself with whatever shape catches the eye. When the poet Marvel says—

      Casting the body's vest aside,

       My soul into the boughs does glide;

       There, like a bird, it sits and sings,

       Then whets and combs its silver wings,

       And, till prepared for longer flight,

       Waves in its plumes the various light—

      he is merely expressing a commonplace of primitive mental experience, transformation stories being of the essence of Polynesian as of much primitive speculation about the natural objects to which his eye is drawn with wonder and delight.

       Footnotes to Section III, 3: Analogy

      [Footnote 1: Turner, Samoa, p. 220.]

      [Footnote 2: Ibid.; Moerenhout, I, 407–410.]

      [Footnote 3: Turner, Samoa, pp. 216–221; Williams and Calvert, I, p. 110.]

      [Footnote 4: Williams and Calvert, I, 118.]

      [Footnote 5: Moerenhout, II, 146.]

4. THE DOUBLE MEANING; PLAYS ON WORDS

       Table of Contents

      Analogy is the basis of many a double meaning. There is, in fact, no lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it some implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an adroit and practiced mind to unravel.

      This riddling tendency of figurative verse seems to be due to the aristocratic patronage of composition, whose tendency was to exalt language above the comprehension of the common people, either by obscurity, through ellipsis and allusion, or by saying one thing and meaning another. A special chief's language was thus evolved, in which the speaker might couch his secret resolves and commands unsuspected by those who stood within earshot. Quick interpretation of such symbols was the test of chiefly rank and training. On the other hand, the wish to appear innocent led him to hide his meaning in a commonplace observation. Hence nature and the objects and actions of everyday life were the symbols employed. For the heightened language of poetry the same chiefly strain was cultivated—the allusion, metaphor, the double meaning became essential to its art; and in the song of certain periods a play on words by punning and word linking became highly artificial requirements.[1]

      Illustrations of this art do not fall upon a foreign ear with the force which they have in the Polynesian, because much of the skill lies in tricks with words impossible to translate, and often the jest depends upon a custom or allusion with which the foreigner is unfamiliar. It is for this reason that such an art becomes of social value, because only the chief who keeps up with the fashion and the follower who hangs upon the words of his chief can translate the allusion and parry the thrust or satisfy the request. In a Samoan tale a wandering magician requests in one village "to go dove catching," and has the laugh on his simple host because he takes him at his word instead of bringing him a wife. In a Tongan story[2] the chief grows hungry while out on a canoe trip, and bids his servant, "Look for a banana stalk on the weather side of the boat." As this is the side of the women, the command meant "Kill a woman for me to eat." The woman designed for slaughter is in this case wise enough to catch his meaning and save herself and child by hiding under the canoe. In Fornander's story a usurper and his accomplice plan the moment for the death of their chief over a game of konane, the innocent words which seem to apply to the game being uttered by the conspirators with a more sinister meaning. The language of insults and opprobrium is particularly rich in such double meanings. The pig god, wishing to insult Pélé, who has refused his advances, sings of her, innocently enough to common ears, as a "woman pounding noni." Now, the noni is the plant from which red dye is extracted; the allusion therefore is to Pélé's red eyes, and the goddess promptly resents the implication.

      It is to this chiefly art of riddling that we must ascribe the stories of riddling contests that are handed