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

torches that burn for Kane.

      Ghostly and drear the walls of Waipio

      At the endless blasts of Kiha-pú.

      The king's awa fails to console him;

      'Tis the all-night conching of Kiha-pú.

      Broken his sleep the whole winter;

      Downcast and sad, sad and downcast,

      At loss to find a brave hunter

      Shall steal the damned conch from the cliff.

      Look, how it gleams [through the fog]!

      Kane, the chief god of the Hawaiian pantheon, in company with other immortals, his boon companions, met in revelry on the heights bounding Wai-pi'o valley. With each potation of awa they sounded a blast upon their conch-shells, and the racket was almost continuous from the setting of the sun until drowsiness overcame them or the coming of day put an end to their revels.

      The tumult of sound made it impossible for the priests to perform acceptably the offices of religion, and the pious king, Liloa, was distressed beyond measure. The whole valley was disturbed and troubled with forebodings at the suspension of divine worship.

      The chief offender was Kane himself. The trumpet which he held to his lips was a conch of extraordinary size (pl. XIV) and credited with a divine origin and the possession of supernatural power; its note was heard above all the others. This shell, the famed Kiha-pú, had been stolen from the heiau of Paka'a-lána, Liloa's temple in Waipi'o valley, and-after many-adventures had come into the hands of god Kane, who used it, as we see, for the interruption of the very services that were intended for his honor.

      The relief from this novel and unprecedented situation came from an unexpected quarter. King Liloa's awa-patches were found to be suffering from the nocturnal visits of a thief. A watch was set; the thief proved to be a dog, Puapua-lenalena, whose master was a confirmed awa-toper. When master and dog were brought into the presence of King Liloa, the shrewd monarch divined the remarkable character of the animal, and at his suggestion the dog was sent on the errand which resulted in the recovery by stealth of the famed conch Kiha-pú. As a result of his loss of the conch, Kane put an end to his revels, and the valley of Wai-pi'o again had peace.

      This mele is an admirable specimen of Hawaiian poetry, and may be taken as representative of the best product of Hawaii's classical period. The language is elegant and concise, free from the redundancies that so often load down Hawaiian compositions. No one, it is thought, will deny to the subject-matter of this mele an unusual degree of interest.

      There is a historic side to the story of the conch-shell Kiha-pú. Not many years ago the Hawaiian Museum contained an ethnological specimen of great interest, the conch-shell Kiha-pú. It was fringed, after the fashion of a witch-doll, with strings, beads, and wampumlike bits of mother-of-pearl, and had great repute as a kupua or luckbringer. King Kalakaua, who affected a sentimental leaning to the notions of his mother's race, took possession of this famous "curio" and it disappeared from public view.

²⁶⁶ Lehua. See plate XIII.

²⁶⁷ Ka-ulua. The name of the third month of the Hawaiian year, corresponding to late January or February, a time when In the latitude of Hawaii nature does not refrain from leafing and flowering.

²⁶⁸ Haumea. The name applied after her death and apotheosis to Papa, the wife of Wakea, and the ancestress of the Hawaiian race. (The Polynesian Race, A. Fornander, 1, 205. London, 1878.)

²⁶⁹ It is doubtful to whom the expression "makua-kane" refers, possibly to Wakea, the husband of Papa; and if so, very properly termed father, ancestor, of the people.

²⁷⁰ Manu o Kaáe (Manu-o-Kaáe it might be written) is said to have been a goddess, one of the family of Pele, a sister of the sea nymph Moana-nui-ka-lehua, whose dominion was in the waters between Oahu and Kauai. She is said to have had the gift of eloquence.

²⁷¹ Pe-káu refers to the ranks and classes of the gods.

²⁷² Pe-ka-naná refers to men, their ranks and classes.

²⁷³ Pupu we'u-we'u. A bouquet. The reference is to the wreaths and floral decorations that bedecked the altar, and that were not only offerings to the goddess, but symbols of the diverse forms in which she manifested herself. At the conclusion of a performance the players laid upon the altar the garlands they themselves had worn. These were in addition to those which were placed there before the play began.

²⁷⁴ Ku-wá. It has cost much time and trouble to dig out the meaning of this word. The fundamental notion is that contained in its two parts, ku, to stand, and wa, an interval or space, the whole meaning to arrange or set in orderly intervals.

²⁷⁵ La-ká. A Tahitian name for the tree which in Hawaii is called lehua, or ohia. In verse 3 the Hawaiian name ohia and the Tahitian laká (accented on the final syllable, thus distinguishing it from the name of the goddess Láka, with which it has no discoverable connection) are combined in one form as an appellation of the god Ku-ku-ka-ohia-Laká. This is a notable instance of the survival of a word as a sacred epithet in a liturgy, which otherwise, had been lost to the language.

²⁷⁶ Ku-pulu-pulu. Ku, the fuzzy or shaggy, a deity much worshiped by canoe-makers, represented as having the figure of an old man with a long beard. In the sixth verse the full form of the god's name here given as Moku-ha-li'i would be Ku-moku-hali'i, the last part being an epithet applied to Ku working in another capacity. Moku-hali'i is the one who bedecks the island. His special emblem, as here implied, was the lama, a beautiful tree, whose wood was formerly used in making certain sacred inclosures. From this comes the proper name Palama, one of the districts of Honolulu.

²⁷⁷ Kú-i-kú-i. The same as the tree now called ku-kú-i, the tree whose nuts were used as candles and flambeaus. The Samoan name of the same tree is tú-i-tú-i.

²⁷⁸ A literal translation of the first line would be as follows: (Here) stands the doomed sacrifice for the journey in search of a bed-lover.

²⁷⁹ Huli-wale. To turn about, here used as the name of a place, is evidently intended figuratively to stand for mental indecision.

²⁸⁰ The bracketed phrase is not in the text of the original.

²⁸¹ Kéha is an elegant expression for the side of the head.