The Story of Hawaii: History, Customs, Mythology, Geography & Archaeology. Fowke Gerard

by showers.

      Hala-li'i (verse 5) is a sandy plain on Niihau, and the peculiarity of its canes is that they sprawl along on the ground, and are often to a considerable extent covered by the loose soil.

      Lehua (verse 6) is the well-known bird-island, lying north of Niihau and visible from the Waimea side of Kauai.

      The wreath-maker, haku-lei (verse 7), who dwells at Waimea, is perhaps the ocean-vapor, or the moist sea-breeze, or, it may be, some figment of the poet's imagination--the author can not make out exactly what.

      The hinahina (verse 14), a native geranium, is a mountain shrub that stands about 3 feet high, with silver-gray leaves.

      Maka-weli, Maka-li'i, Koae'a, and Pa-ie-ie are names of places on Kauai.

      Puu-ka-Pele (verse 20) as the name indicates, is a volcanic hill, situated near Waimea.

      The key or answer (puana), to the allegory given in verse 20, Ke kahuna kalai-hoe o Puu-ka-Pele, the paddle-making kahuna of Pele's mount, when declared by the poet (haku-mele), is not very informing to the foreign mind; but to the Hawaiian auditor it, no doubt, took the place of our haec fabula docet, and it at least showed that the poet was not without an intelligent motive. In the poem in point the author acknowledges his inability to make connection between it and the body of the song.

      One merit we must concede to Hawaiian poetry, it wastes no time in slow approach. The first stroke of the artist places the auditor in medias res.

²⁴⁶ Translated by N.B. Emerson, M.D., under the title "Hawaiian Antiquities," and published by the B.P. Bishop Museum. Hawaiian Gazette Company (Limited), Honolulu, 1903.

      XIV.--THE HULA PUÍLI

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      The character of a hula was determined to some extent by the nature of the musical instrument that was its accompaniment. In the hula puíli it certainly seems as if one could discern the influence of the rude, but effective, instrument that was its musical adjunct. This instrument, the puíli (fig. 1), consisted of a section of bamboo from which one node with its diaphragm had been removed and the hollow joint at that end split up for a considerable distance into fine divisions, which gave forth a breezy rustling when the instrument was struck or shaken.

      The performers, all of them hoopaa, were often placed in two rows, seated or kneeling and facing one another, thus favoring a responsive action in the use of the puíli as well as in the cantillation of the song. One division would sometimes shake and brandish their instruments, while the others remained quiet, or both divisions would perform at once, each individual clashing one puíli against the other one held by himself, or against that of his vis-a-vis; or they might toss them back and forth to each other, one bamboo passing another in mid air.

      While the hula puíli is undeniably a performance of classical antiquity, it is not to be regarded as of great dignity or importance as compared with many other hulas. Its character, like that of the meles associated with it, is light and trivial.

      The mele next presented is by no means a modern production. It seems to be the work of some unknown author, a fragment of folklore, it might be called by some, that has drifted down to the present generation and then been put to service in the hula. If hitherto the word folklore has not been used it is not from any prejudice against it, but rather from a feeling that there exists an inclination to stretch the application of it beyond its true limits and to make it include popular songs, stories, myths, and the like, regardless of its fitness of application. Some writers, no doubt, would apply this vague term to a large part of the poetical pieces which are given in this book.

      On the same principle, why should they not apply the term folklore to the myths and stories that make up the body of Roman and Greek mythology? The present author reserves the term folklore for application to those unappropriated scraps of popular song, story, myth, and superstition that have drifted down the stream of antiquity and that reach us in the scrap-bag of popular memory, often bearing in their battered forms the evidence of long use.

       Mele

      Hiki mai, niki mai ka La, e.

      Aloha wale ka La e kau nei,

Aia malalo o Ka-wai-hoa,²⁴⁷

      A ka lalo o Kauai, o Lehua.

      A Kauai au, ike i ka pali;

A Milo-lii²⁴⁸ pale ka pali loloa.

E kolo ana ka pali o Makua-iki;²⁴⁹

      Kolo o Pu-á, he keiki,

      He keiki makua-ole ke uwe nei.

      [Translation]

       Song

      It has come, it has come; lo the Sun!

      How I love the Sun that's on high;

      Below it swims Ka-wai-hoa,

      Oa the slope inclined from Lehua.

      On Kauai met I a pali,

      A beetling cliff that bounds Milo-lii,

      And climbing up Makua-iki,

      Crawling up was Pua, the child,

      An orphan that weeps out its tale.

      The writer has rescued the following fragment from the wastebasket of Hawaiian song. A lean-to of modern verse has been omitted; it was evidently added within a generation:

       Mele

Malua,²⁵⁰ ki'i wai ke aloha,

      Hoopulu i ka liko mamane.

      Uleuleu mai na manu,

Inu wai lehua o Panaewa,²⁵¹

      E walea ana i ke onaona,

      Ke one wali o Ohele.

      Hele mal nei kou aloha

      A lalawe i ko'u nui kino,

      Au i hookohu ai,

      E kuko i ka manao.

Kuhi no paha oe no Hopoe²⁵²

      Nei lehua au i ka hana ohi ai.

      [Translation]

       Song

      Malua, fetch water of love,

      Give drink to this mamane bud.

      The birds, they are singing ecstatic,

      Sipping Panaewa's nectared lehua,

      Beside themselves with the fragrance

      Exhaled from the garden Ohele.

      Your love comes to me a tornado;

      It has rapt away my whole body,

      The heart you once sealed as your own,

      There planted the seed of desire.

      Thought you 'twas the tree of Hopoe,

      This tree, whose bloom you would