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Title: At the gateways of the day
Author: Colum, Padraic
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "At the gateways of the day" ***
DAY ***
At the
Gateways of the Day
by Padraic Colum
with illustrations by Juliette May Fraser
New Haven
Published for The Hawaiian Legend & Folklore
Commission by the Yale University Press
London · Humphrey Milford · Oxford University Press
1924
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME
TO THE MEMBERS OF
THE HAWAIIAN LEGEND AND FOLKLORE COMMISSION
JOHN R. GALT
EDNA J. HILL
MARY S. LAWRENCE
EMMA AHUENA D. TAYLOR
AND TO FIVE KAMA AINA WHO HELPED ME
JOSEPH S. EMERSON
WILLIAM HYDE RICE
JULIE JUDD SWANZY
THOMAS G. THRUM
WILLIAM DRAKE WESTERVELT
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Introduction xiii
The Boy Pu-nia and the King of the Sharks 1
The Seven Great Deeds of Ma-ui 7
How Ma-ui won a place for himself in the House 7
How Ma-ui lifted up the Sky 10
How Ma-ui fished up the Great Island 15
How Ma-ui snared the Sun and made Him go more slowly
across the Heavens 20
How Ma-ui won fire for Men 27
How Ma-ui overcame Kuna Loa the Long Eel 32
The Search that Ma-ui’s Brother made for his Sister
Hina-of-the-Sea 38
How Ma-ui strove to win Immortality for Men 41
Au-ke-le the Seeker 45
Pi-ko-i: The Boy Who Was Good at Shooting Arrows 69
Paka: The Boy Who Was Reared in the Land that the Gods
Have Since Hidden 81
The Story of Ha-le-ma-no and the Princess Kama 93
The Arrow and the Swing 107
The Daughter of the King of Ku-ai-he-lani 117
The Fish-Hook of Pearl 131
The Story of Kana, the Youth Who Could Stretch
Himself Upwards 137
The Me-ne-hu-ne 149
The Story of Mo-e Mo-e: Also a Story about Po-o and
about Kau-hu-hu the Shark-God, and about Mo-e Mo-e’s
Son, the Man Who Was Bold in His Wish 165
The Woman from Lalo-hana, the Country under the Sea 193
Hina, the Woman in the Moon 199
Notes 203
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Facing page
“Then Pu-nia dived ... into the cave, took two lobsters in
his hands, and came up on the place that he had spoken from” 2
“Four birds ... came and lit on the yards, and asked of those
below what they had come for” 52
“The owl of Ka-ne came and sat on the stones and stared at him” 150
“Koni-konia and Hina ... climbed to the tops of the trees that
were on the tops of the mountains” 198
“It made an arching path for her from the rocks up to the
heavens. With the net in her hands she went along that path” 200
HELPS TO PRONUNCIATION.
There are three simple rules which practically control Hawaiian
pronunciation: (1) Pronounce each vowel. (2) Never allow a consonant to
close a syllable. (3) Give the vowels the following values:
a = a in father
e = ey in they
i = i in machine
o = o in note
u = oo in tool
INTRODUCTION.
If you draw a line from the tip of New Zealand to the top of the
Hawaiian Islands, you will be able to indicate the true Polynesian
area. On the islands towards the Malay Peninsula there is a mixed
people who show the Papuan strain that is in them. They are the
Melanesians. On the American side of the line there is a singularly
homogeneous people who are of a type like to our own. They are the
Polynesians. We have been able to pay ourselves the compliment of
admiring them ever since the chronicler of Mendaña’s voyages looked
upon the men and women of the Marquesas and found that “they had
beautiful faces and the most promising animation of countenance; and
were in all things so becoming that the pilot-mayor Quiros affirmed
nothing in his life caused him so much regret as leaving such fine
creatures to be lost in that country.” [1]
And yet the Polynesians, so like us physically, have in their romances
none of the familiar veins that one can discover in, let us say, the
folk-tales of the darker peoples in the lands around India. I take up
Studies in Religion, Folk-lore, and Custom in North Borneo and the
Malay Peninsula, [2] and I strike at once into:
Now the Raja had given it out that whoever could remove the
dragon’s head should marry his daughter, who was shut up in an
inner room and enclosed by a seven-fold fence of ivory; but nobody
could do it, for the dragon’s head was as big as a mountain.
This is from a folk-tale told amongst the aboriginal tribes of the
Malay Peninsula. And when I read the opening of another tale I am in an
imaginative land so familiar that I know every turn and track in it.—
“Oh,” said Serunggal, “it is no use my stopping here. I had better
go and marry a Raja’s daughter.”
The tale goes on, and we have the Raja setting the adventurous youth
three tasks, just as the King or the Enchanter sets the youth three
tasks in a story that has been told in every village in Ireland and
Serbia, in Spain and Sweden, in Russia and Italy; in a story that was
given literary form in classic Greece in Jason and Medea, and in
mediæval Wales in Kulhwch and Olwen. And this tale of Serunggal and the
Raja’s daughter belongs to one of the dark tribes of Borneo.
There are animal helpers in this particular tale, just as there are
animal helpers in the ancient Greek folk-tale of Cupid and Psyche.
Indeed, the stories belonging to Borneo and the Malay Peninsula are
well filled with animals—turtles and deer, elephants and ant-eaters;
they might be the material out of which Rudyard Kipling made his
unforgettable Jungle Book and his Just-So Stories.
In Polynesia we find no romance that is based on formulæ familiar to
us. Only occasionally does a helping creature appear. There are
practically no animal stories, for the sufficient reason that the
Polynesian did not have opportunities for forming a wide animal
acquaintanceship. He brought the pig and the dog to the Islands with
him; and the shark and the turtle, the owl and the plover, were the
only creatures that aroused an interest in him. Even the way of
counting things is changed when we get into Polynesian romance: instead
of three, seven, and nine, we have four, eight, and sixteen for the
cabalistic numbers.
And yet, as all human desire is the same, and as human mentality
compels a certain sequence of incident, and there seem to be patterns
in incident that all human beings find it delightful to work out, the
Polynesian stories have the elements and the combination of elements
that make fine narrative. Often the Polynesian story-teller rediscovers
a formula that we have used to make a memorable tale. Thus, in the
present collection, the daughter of the King of Ku-ai-he-lani will
recall Cinderella, and the story of Au-ke-le will recall the story of
the Irish hero Oisin and all the other stories of men who travelled far
and returned to their own land; it will remind us of Odysseus and Rip
Van Winkle.
In the folk-romance and in the mythological stories of Europe there are
places that may not be entered, and there are women whom a man must not
approach. There is Blue Beard’s Chamber; there is Danaë, and there is
the Eithlinn of Celtic mythology. Polynesian romance has places that
may not be entered, and women who must not be approached by men. And it
has these instances in almost every story. Indeed, without the guarded
maiden and the forbidden place a Polynesian story-teller would find it
difficult to carry on. And one knows that when he was dealing with one
or the other he was dealing with the life around him: the place was
tapu, [3] the maiden was tapu. And the place or the maiden was tapu
simply because a king or a chief with the privilege of declaring tapu
had so declared it. When we read the story of Ka-we-lu in The Arrow and
the Swing, or of Kama in The Story of Ha-le-ma-no and the Princess
Kama, we can easily see how, as the simplicity of tapu was forgotten,
the maiden would be given a fantastic security like that of Danaë in
her brazen tower, or like that of Eithlinn in her inaccessible island,
and we can see how motives would be invented for keeping her apart:
Danaë’s son and Eithlinn’s son are destined to slay their grandfathers.
Every race has had tapu. But the Polynesians held to it and made it
their single discipline. In these Polynesian stories we are at the very
beginning of a romance that for Europeans has grown to be fraught with
magic and mystery.
I spent the months of January, February, March, and April of 1923 in
the Hawaiian Islands. I went there under the following circumstances:
The Hawaiian Legislature had formed a Commission on Myth and Folk-lore;
the function of the Commission was to have a survey made of the stories
that had been collected and that belonged to myth and folk-lore of the
Islands, and to have them made over into stories for children—primarily
for the children of the Hawaiian Islands. By an arrangement made
between the Commission and the Yale University Press, I was invited to
make the survey and to reshape the stories.
I learned something of the language; I sought out those who still had
the tradition of Hawaiian romance and who could recite it in the
traditional way; I made a study of all the material that had been
collected; I placed myself in the hands of the very distinguished group
of Polynesian scholars that is in Honolulu. Quite early in my
researches I came to the conclusion that my work should be based on the
Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-lore, published
by the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural
History, in Honolulu, and I made it my main task to understand the
background of the stories given in that collection, and to hear as many
of them as possible from the lips of the surviving custodians of the
Polynesian tradition in Hawaii.
I found in the Hawaiian Islands conditions that are lamentably like the
conditions in certain European countries where separate and interesting
cultures are being pushed aside by this or that culture that is
politically and commercially important. In Hawaii there is a great
breach in the native tradition: I have been in houses where a
grandmother or grandfather knew traditional Hawaiian poems (mele) and
could chant them in the traditional way, while a son or daughter would
be able to translate them, but not able to chant them, and a grandchild
would be able neither to chant the poems nor translate them. Once, I
remember, in such a house, I went to see what a little girl, the
granddaughter of a lady who had chanted mele to me for about an hour,
was studying. This child had not allowed herself to be interrupted
either by the chanting of her grandmother or by the translating that
her father did for me; she was bent on mastering a lesson in a book
that she kept before her—an American school geography. “Stockholm is
the capital of Sweden, Vienna is the capital of Austria,” was one of
the items that had kept her absorbed.
I discovered that of the stories which I knew from the Fornander
Collection, few lived in the memory of the generations at present in
the Islands. On the Island of Maui I met a distinguished Hawaiian lady
who had been at the court of King Kalakaua, and who, in her youth, had
been a trained story-teller. She tried to give me some of the stories
that belonged to her repertoire. But no sooner had she begun than she
declared that she was no longer familiar with the language in which the
stories were told—they were in the idiom of the Alii or the Chiefs, an
idiom that she had not used since her days at court.
I heard many stories told, some by men, some by women. One of the best
story-tellers that I came across was a young man whom I met on the
Island of Molokai. His father was Chinese, and he had learnt the
stories from his grandmother. He told me several stories; one of them
was the story of the rescue of Hina by her son Kana, a story given in
Fornander, and evidently belonging to the folk.
What impressed me most in these recitals was the gesture of the
story-teller. Every feature, every finger of the man or woman becomes
alive, becomes dramatic, as the recital is entered on. The gesture of
the Hawaiian makes the telling of a story a dramatic entertainment.
Scholars have written of the long and monotonous stories told in the
old days in Hawaii. The stories were long, but the gesture of the
story-teller must have saved them from an unrelieved monotony. I was
made to recall again and again Melville’s description of an
entertainment given him by a genial Marquesan youth; it is a
description that gives the spirit in which the unspoiled Polynesian
dramatizes his moods and his reactions. Says Melville: “Upon my
signifying my desire that he should pluck me the young fruit of some
particular tree, the handsome savage, throwing himself into a sudden
attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of
the request. Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange
emotions depicted on his countenance soften down into one of humorous
resignation to my will, and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top
of the tree, he stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his
arm, as though endeavoring to reach the fruit from the ground where he
stands. As if defeated in this childish attempt, he now sinks to the
earth despondingly, beating his breast in well-acted despair; and then,
starting to his feet all at once, and throwing back his head, raises
both hands, like a school boy about to catch a falling ball. And
continuing this for a moment or two, as if in expectation that the
fruit was going to be tossed down to him by some good spirit on the
tree-top, he turns wildly round in another fit of despair, and scampers
off to a distance of thirty or forty yards. Here he remains a while,
eyeing the tree, the very picture of misery; but the next moment,
receiving, as it were, a flash of inspiration, he rushes again towards
it, and clasping both arms about the trunk, with one elevated a little
above the other, he presses the soles of his feet close together
against the tree, extending his legs from it until they are nearly
horizontal, and his body becomes doubled into an arch; then, hand over
hand and foot after foot he rises from the earth with steady rapidity,
and almost before you are aware of it, has gained the cradled and
embowered nest of nuts, and with boisterous glee flings the fruit to
the ground.” Imagine this spontaneous gesture applied to the telling of
a story, every incident of which gives rise to gesture. But the gesture
in the story-recital was not merely spontaneous; it was trained, as was
the gesture in the hula or Polynesian ballet. Dr. Nathaniel Emerson has
a chapter on gesture in his Unwritten Literature of Hawaii, and he
gives this instance amongst others: “To indicate death, the death of a
person, the finger-tips, placed in apposition, are drawn away from each
other with a sweeping gesture and at the same time lowered till the
palms face the ground. In this case also we find diversity. One old
man, well acquainted with hula matters, being asked to signify in
pantomimic fashion ‘The king is sick,’ went through the following
motions: He first pointed upward, to indicate the heaven-born one, the
king; then he brought his hands to his body and threw his face into a
painful grimace. To indicate the death of the king he threw his hands
upward towards the sky, as if to signify a removal by flight.”
This unconstrained, dramatic gesture is being lost. There is no longer
a school for gesture in the hula. And the Hawaiian is checking his
movements towards gesture. It used to be said: “Tie an Hawaiian’s hands
and he can’t talk.” The older men and women still have that wonderful
command of their features and their hands—a command that made them the
greatest ballet-performers that the world, I believe, has ever had—but
the younger generation feel that to use gesture is to be rustic, to be
“Kanaka.”.
There is still, amongst the Hawaiians who live in the old Polynesian
way, in villages along the beaches, with the taro patches near, a great
treasury of poetry and native lore. But the newspaper and the victrola
are taking up the time and the interest that used to be devoted to
poetry, traditional games, riddles, and the like. I have been in
cottages where the people still sit or lie on their mats on the floor,
ignoring tables, chairs, and beds, and where they eat with their
fingers, lifting the poi out of the common bowl. In such houses I have
found a real scholarship, a delight in poetry, and the possession of
such a quantity of it as would put to shame a cultivated American,
Englishman, or Frenchman. But even in such houses I was aware that the
tradition was passing. Sitting on the floor in one such house, around a
petroleum lamp also on the floor, I have spelled out news items in an
Hawaiian newspaper that told of the French in the Ruhr and preparations
for elections in Ireland.
The world surges in on the Hawaiian Islands. And the Hawaiian can no
longer give himself solely to the tradition that bound him to the
valleys and the mountains, and that knit him to Wakea and Papa, who
begat and brought forth the islands and the men and women upon them.
That separate tradition, which for thousands of years he lived by, is
being broken up, as the surge breaks up the lava on his coast. The
Hawaiian who, at the time when the Americans were making their
declaration of independence, was still working with tools of stone,
knowing nothing of metals, of pottery, of the loom, and knowing of no
animal larger than a dog or a pig, has now to take some account of the
continents.
With one exception the titles in this collection cover stories that are
Hawaiian in the sense that they were given their shape upon the
Hawaiian Islands. That exception is The Seven Great Deeds of Ma-ui.
Although the scene of the demi-god’s adventures is Hawaiian, I have
used incidents related of him in other Polynesian islands—in New
Zealand, Samoa, and the lesser islands. I have treated Ma-ui, not as an
Hawaiian, but as the Pan-Polynesian hero that he is. With this
exception the stories are all out of the Hawaiian tradition, or rather
out of the Polynesian tradition as it has been shaped in Hawaii.
And the stories are mainly taken from that treasure house of Hawaiian
lore, the Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-lore,
which form Volumes IV–VI of the Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop
Museum of Honolulu, published 1916–1919. I have gone outside the
Fornander Collection in several instances. The Seven Great Deeds of
Ma-ui comes out of Mr. Westervelt’s valuable book, Ma-ui the Demi-God;
the stories of the Me-ne-hu-ne come out of Mr. Thrum’s Stories of the
Menehunes and Mr. Rice’s Hawaiian Legends; and I have drawn the story
about Hina, the Woman of Lalo-hana, from David Malo’s Hawaiian
Antiquities, and the story about the Shark-god from an old publication
of the Islands, The Maile Quarterly. But it is the Fornander Collection
that has given a cast to this book, and I must now give a brief account
of it.
Abraham Fornander, the author of The Polynesian Race, lived on the
Islands for over forty years. He edited a journal called The
Polynesian, and he was Superintendent of Public Instruction on the
Islands in 1865–1866. He had married an Hawaiian lady, and he was a
strong partisan of the native race.
The theory which he expounds in The Polynesian Race is that the
Polynesian people carried with them into the islands of the Pacific a
culture and a set of ideas that connect them with the East Indians—with
the pre-Sanscrit culture and with an Arabian culture that touched both
the Hebrews and the East Indians. There is no reason to take this
theory into account now. The important thing is that Abraham Fornander,
in order to substantiate it, made an appeal to the traditions that were
then current amongst the natives of Hawaii.
At that time, over forty years ago, there was considerable native
scholarship. Haleole, who made an attempt to found a native literature
with his romance Laieikawai, was writing and publishing. The Mission
School in Lahainaluna on the Island of Maui had become a sort of
Hawaiian university. Abraham Fornander had the good sense to appeal to
native scholars, and he was able to get the best of them to interest
themselves in his project of collecting all the native lore that could
throw a light on the migrations of the Polynesian people. The Hawaiian
monarchy was then in undisputed existence; native institutions were
still vigorous; everywhere there were men and women whose memories were
stocked with the historical traditions and the romances of Hawaii.
With the help of a corps of native scholars a great deal of the
surviving tradition of Hawaii was collected by Fornander. Some of it
was published in the Hawaiian newspapers of the time, but no extensive
publication was given to it. The manuscripts were kept together; then,
on the death of Abraham Fornander in 1887, the collection was acquired
by Charles R. Bishop, the husband of Bernice Pauahi, an Hawaiian
royalty whose estate went to the foundation of the Bernice Pauahi
Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History in Honolulu.
Forty years after it had been got together, the publication of the
material was begun by the Bishop Museum. That was in 1916. The volumes
have appeared under the editorship of that veteran Hawaiian scholar,
Mr. Thomas Thrum, with the Hawaiian text on one page and the English
translation by Mr. John Wise on the other. It is Mr. Wise’s
translations that have furnished me with the bulk of the material for
this book.
Although the stories are described in the Museum publications as
folk-lore, I doubted from the time of my first reading of them that
they were folk-lore in the strict sense of the word; that is, I doubted
their coming out of an unlearned and popular tradition. The greater
number of them seemed to me to be deliberate compositions intended for
a rather select audience. And then I found that a great master of
Hawaiian tradition, Mr. William Hyde Rice, favored this opinion. In the
Introduction to his Hawaiian Legends [4] it is said:
Mr. Rice’s theory as to the origin of these legends is based on the
fact that in the old days, before the discovery of the Islands by
Captain Cook, there were bards and story-tellers, either itinerant
or attached to the courts of the chiefs, similar to the minstrels
and tale-tellers of mediæval Europe. These men formed a distinct
class, and lived only at the courts of the high chiefs.
Accordingly, their stories were heard by none except those people
attached to the service of the chiefs. This accounts for the loss
of many legends, in later years, as they were not commonly known.
These bards or story-tellers sometimes used historical incidents or
natural phenomena for the foundation of their stories, which were
handed down from generation to generation. Other legends were
simply fabrications of the imagination, in which the greatest
“teller of tales” was awarded the highest place in the chief’s
favor. All these elements, fiction combined with fact, and shrouded
in the mist of antiquity, came, by repetition, to be more or less
believed as true. This class of men were skillful in the art of the
“apo”—that is, “catching,” literally, or memorizing instantly at
the first hearing. One man would recite or chant for two or three
hours at a stretch, and when he had finished, his auditor would
start at the beginning of the chant and go through the whole mele
or story without missing or changing a word. These trained men
received through their ears as we receive through our eyes, and in
that way the ancient Hawaiians had a spoken literature much as we
have a written one.
And as to the substance of this spoken literature, Miss Martha Warren
Beckwith, who has made by her edition of Haleole’s romance of
Laieikawai a valuable contribution to the knowledge of Polynesian
poetry and romance, states that the traditional Hawaiian romance
belongs to no isolated group but to the whole Polynesian area. “We
find,” she says, “the same story told in New Zealand and Hawaii,
scarcely changed, even in name.” Miss Beckwith thinks that the bulk of
Hawaiian romance consists of stories about the demi-gods—beings
descended from the gods, or adopted or endowed by them. These legendary
tales reflect actual Polynesian conditions—“Gods and men are, in fact,
to the Polynesian mind, one family under different forms, the gods
having superior control over certain phenomena, a control which they
can impart to their offspring on earth.... The supernatural blends with
the natural in exactly the same way as to the Polynesian mind gods
relate themselves to men, facts about one being regarded as, even
though removed to the heavens, quite as objective as those which belong
to the other, and being employed to explain social customs and physical
appearances in actual experience.”
The bulk of the stories in the present volume are founded, then, on
Polynesian literature rather than on Polynesian folk-lore. They are
based on the compositions of men who were trained in the handling of
character and incident. There are stories in the volume that obviously
belong to folk-lore, however. The stories of the Me-ne-hu-ne, which are
not given in the Fornander Collection, but are taken from the work of
Mr. Thrum and Mr. Rice, are folk-lore, I believe. The stories of Ma-ui
the demi-god are folk-lore, too. The story of Hina coming from the land
under the sea, and the other story of her going to the moon and
becoming the woman in the moon, undoubtedly belong to Polynesian
folk-lore.
I do not believe that the Polynesian language, with its sounds that
seem to belong to the forest and the sea, is going or that it has to
go. Indeed, there may be a Polynesian revival similar to the national
revivals which we have seen in European countries; the Polynesian, with
tragic exceptions in the case of the people of the Marquesas, is coming
back. He has turned the corner; our diseases no longer threaten his
very existence. And yet, although his language and parts of his culture
will probably remain for many generations, his children, if they are in
the American territory of Hawaii, and if they are to read the romances
of old Hawaii, will have to read them in English. For them, and for the
neo-Hawaiian children—the children of American, British, Portuguese,
Japanese, and Chinese parents, mixed or unmixed with Hawaiian
blood—these stories have been reshaped. I have had to condense, expand,
heighten, subdue, rearrange—in a word, I have had to retell the
stories, using the old romances as material for wonder-stories. The old
stories were not for children; they gave an image of life to kings and
soldiers, to courtiers and to ruling women. As in all stories not
originally intended for children, much has had to be suppressed in
retelling them for a youthful audience.
And retelling them has meant that I have had to find a new form for the
stories. The form that I choose to give them is that of the European
folk-tale.
In Hawaiian romance there is a feeling that is rare in any body of
popular European romance—a feeling for the beauty of nature, for
flowers and trees, the aspect of the clouds, the look of the sea, the
sight of mountains, for the beauty of the rainbow and the waterfall.
And part of the delight in retelling these stories is in recalling the
beauties of places that are beautifully named. To be true in any
measure to the originals these stories of my retelling should have in
them the rainbow and the waterfall, the volcano, the forest, the surf
as it foams over the reef of coral. In the hula or Hawaiian ballet, and
in the poetry that is related to the hula, there is, as Dr. Nathaniel
Emerson has observed, always an idyllic feeling. This idyllic feeling
pervades Hawaiian romance also. The scene of many of the stories, when
not laid in lands that are frankly mythical, is laid in an Hawaiian
Arcadia. And how memorable these lands are!—Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country
that Supports the Heavens, and Pali-uli, the easeful land that the gods
have since hidden. Who would not roam through these lands with those
who first told of them and who first heard of them—the gracious and
vivid children of Wakea and Papa?
PADRAIC COLUM.
THE BOY PU-NIA AND THE KING OF THE SHARKS.
On one side of the Island there lived a great shark: Kai-ale-ale he was
named; he was the King of the Sharks of that place, and he had ten
sharks under him. He lived near a cave that was filled with lobsters.
But no one dared to dive down, and go into that cave, and take lobsters
out of it, on account of Kai-ale-ale and the ten sharks he had under
him; they stayed around the cave night and day, and if a diver ventured
near they would bite him and devour him.
There was a boy named Pu-nia, whose father had been killed by the
sharks. Now after his father had been killed, there was no one to catch
fish for Pu-nia and his mother; they had sweet potatoes to eat, but
they never had any fish to eat with them. Often Pu-nia heard his mother
say that she wished she had a fish or lobster to eat with the sweet
potatoes. He made up his mind that they should have lobsters.
He came above the cave where the lobsters were. Looking down he saw the
sharks—Kai-ale-ale and his ten sharks; they were all asleep. While he
was watching them, they wakened up. Pu-nia pretended that he did not
know that the sharks had wakened. He spoke loudly so that they would
hear him, and he said: “Here am I, Pu-nia, and I am going into the cave
to get lobsters for myself and my mother. That great shark,
Kai-ale-ale, is asleep now, and I can dive to the point over there, and
then go into the cave; I will take two lobsters in my hands, and my
mother and I will have something to eat with our sweet potatoes.” So
Pu-nia said, speaking loudly and pretending that he thought the sharks
were still asleep.
Said Kai-ale-ale, speaking softly to the other sharks: “Let us rush to
the place where Pu-nia dives, and let us devour him as we devoured his
father.” But Pu-nia was a very cunning boy and not at all the sort that
could be caught by the stupid sharks. He had a stone upon his hand
while he was speaking, and he flung it towards the point that he said
he was going to dive to. Just as soon as the stone struck the water the
sharks made a rush to the place, leaving the cave of the lobsters
unguarded. Then Pu-nia dived. He went into the cave, took two lobsters
in his hands, and came up on the place that he had spoken from before.
He shouted down to the sharks: “Here is Pu-nia, and he has come back
safely. He has two lobsters, and he and his mother have something to
live on. It was the first shark, the second shark, the third shark, the
fourth shark, the fifth shark, the sixth shark, the seventh shark, the
eighth shark, the ninth shark, the tenth shark—it was the tenth shark,
the one with the thin tail, that showed Pu-nia what to do.”
When the King of the Sharks, Kai-ale-ale, heard this from Pu-nia, he
ordered all the sharks to come together and stay in a row. He counted
them, and there were ten of them, and the tenth one had a thin tail.
“So it was you, Thin Tail,” he said, “that told the boy Pu-nia what to
do. You shall die.” Then, according to the orders of Kai-ale-ale, the
thin-tailed shark was killed. Pu-nia called out to them, “You have
killed one of your own kind.” With the two lobsters in his hands, he
went back to his mother’s.
Pu-nia and his mother now had something to eat with their sweet
potatoes. And when the lobsters were all eaten, Pu-nia went back to the
place above the cave. He called out, the same as he had done the first
time: “I can dive to the place over there and then slip into the cave,
for the sharks are all asleep; I can get two lobsters for myself and my
mother, so that we’ll have something to eat with our sweet potatoes.”
Then he threw down a stone and made ready to dive to another point.
When the stone struck the water the sharks rushed over, leaving the
cave unguarded. Then Pu-nia dived down and went into the cave. He took
two lobsters in his hands and got back to the top of the water, and
when he got to the place that he had spoken from before, he shouted
down to the sharks: “It was the first shark, the second shark, the
third shark, the fourth shark, the fifth shark, the sixth shark, the
seventh shark, the eighth shark, the ninth shark—it was the ninth
shark, the one with the big stomach, that told Pu-nia what to do.”
Then the King of the Sharks, Kai-ale-ale, ordered the sharks to get
into a line. He counted them, and he found that the ninth shark had a
big stomach. “So it was you that told Pu-nia what to do,” he said; and
he ordered the big-stomached shark to be killed. After that Pu-nia went
home with his two lobsters, and he and his mother had something to eat
with their sweet potatoes.
Pu-nia continued to do this. He would deceive the sharks by throwing a
stone to the place that he said he was going to dive to; when he got
the sharks away from the cave, he would dive down, slip in, and take
two lobsters in his hands. And always, when he got to the top of the
water, he would name a shark. “The first shark, the second shark, the
third shark—the shark with the little eye, the shark with the grey spot
on him—told Pu-nia what to do,” he would say; and each time he would
get one of the sharks killed. He kept on doing this until only one of
the sharks was left; this one was Kai-ale-ale, the King of the Sharks.
After that, Pu-nia went into the forest; he hewed out two hard pieces
of wood, each about a yard long; then he took sticks for lighting a
fire—the au-li-ma to rub with, and the au-na-ki to rub on; he got
charcoal to burn as a fire, and he got food. He put all into a bag, and
he carried the bag down to the beach. He came above the cave that
Kai-ale-ale was watching, and he said, speaking in a loud voice: “If I
dive now, and if Kai-ale-ale bites me, my blood will come to the top of
the water, and my mother will see the blood and will bring me back to
life again. But if I dive down and Kai-ale-ale takes me into his mouth
whole, I shall die and never come back to life again.” Kai-ale-ale was
listening, of course. He said to himself: “No, I will not bite you, you
cunning boy; I will take you into my mouth and swallow you whole, and
then you will never come back to life again. I shall open my mouth wide
enough to take you in. Yes, indeed, this time I will get you.”
Pu-nia dived, holding his bag. Kai-ale-ale opened his mouth wide and
got Pu-nia into it. But as soon as the boy got within, he opened his
bag and took out the two pieces of wood which he had hewn out in the
forest. He put them between the jaws of the shark so that Kai-ale-ale
was not able to close his jaws. With his mouth held open, Kai-ale-ale
went dashing through the water.
Pu-nia was now inside the big shark; he took the fire-sticks out of his
bag and rubbed them together, making a fire. He kindled the charcoal
that he had brought, and he cooked his food at the fire that he had
made. With the fire in his insides, the shark could not keep still; he
went dashing here and there through the ocean.
At last the shark came near the Island of Hawaii again. “If he brings
me near the breakers, I am saved,” said Pu-nia, speaking aloud; “but if
he takes me to the sand near where the grass grows, I shall die; I
cannot be saved.” Kai-ale-ale, when he heard Pu-nia say this, said to
himself: “I will not take him near the breakers; I will take him where
the dry sand is, near the grass.” Saying this, he dashed in from the
ocean and up to where the shrubs grew on the shore. No shark had ever
gone there before; and when Kai-ale-ale got there, he could not get
back again.
Then Pu-nia came out of the shark. He shouted out, “Kai-ale-ale,
Kai-ale-ale, the King of the Sharks, has come to visit us.” And the
people, hearing about their enemy Kai-ale-ale, came down to the shore
with their spears and their knives and killed him. And that was the end
of the ugly and wicked King of the Sharks.
Every day after that, Pu-nia was able to go down into the cave and get
lobsters for himself and his mother. And all the people rejoiced when
they knew that the eleven sharks that guarded the cave had been got rid
of by the boy Pu-nia.
THE SEVEN GREAT DEEDS OF MA-UI.
There is no hero who is more famous than Ma-ui. In all the Islands of
the Great Ocean, from Kahiki-mo-e to Hawaii nei, his name and his deeds
are spoken of. His deeds were many, but seven of them were very great,
and it is about those seven great deeds that I shall tell you.
HOW MA-UI WON A PLACE FOR HIMSELF IN THE HOUSE.
When Ma-ui, the last of her five sons, was born, his mother thought she
would have no food for him. So she took him down to the shore of the
sea, she cut off her hair and tied it around him, and she gave him to
the waves. But Ma-ui was not drowned in the sea: first of all the
jelly-fish came; it folded him in its softness, and it kept him warm
while he floated on. And then the God of the Sea found the child and
took charge of him: he brought him to his house and warmed and
cherished him, and little Ma-ui grew up in the land where lived the God
of the Sea.
But while he was still a boy he went back to his mother’s country. He
saw his mother and his four brothers, and he followed them into a
house; it was a house that all the people of the country were going
into. He sat there with his brothers. And when his mother called her
children to take them home, she found this strange child with them. She
did not know him, and she would not take him with the rest of the
children. But Ma-ui followed them. And when his four brothers came out
of their own house they found him there, and he played with them. At
first they played hide-and-seek, but then they made themselves spears
from canes and began throwing the spears at the house.
The slight spears did not go through the thatch of grass that was at
the outside of the house. And then Ma-ui made a charm over the cane
that was his spear—a charm that toughened it and made it heavy. He
flung it again, and a great hole was made in the grass-thatch of the
house. His mother came out to chastise the boy and drive him away. But
when she stood at the door and saw him standing there so angry, and saw
how he was able to break down the house with the throws of his spear,
she knew in him the great power that his father had, and she called to
him to come into the house. He would not come in until she had laid her
hands upon him. When she did this his brothers were jealous that their
mother made so much of this strange boy, and they did not want to have
him with them. It was then that the elder brother spoke and said,
“Never mind; let him be with us and be our dear brother.” And then they
all asked him to come into the house.
The door-posts, Short Post and Tall Post, that had been put there to
guard the house, would not let him come in. Then Ma-ui lifted up his
spear, and he threw it at Tall Post and overthrew him. He threw his
spear again and overthrew Short Post. And after that he went into his
mother’s house and was with his brothers. The overthrowing of the two
posts that guarded the house was the first of the great deeds of Ma-ui.
In those days, say the people who know the stories of the old times,
the birds were not seen by the men and women of the Islands. They flew
around the houses, and the flutter of their wings was heard, and the
stirring of the branches and the leaves as they were lit upon. Then
there would be music. But the people who had never seen the birds
thought that this was music made by gods who wanted to remain unseen by
the people. Ma-ui could see the birds; he rejoiced in their brilliant
colors, and when he called to them they would come and rest upon the
branches around the place where he was; there they would sing their
happiest songs to him.
There was a visitor who came from another land to the country that
Ma-ui lived in. He boasted of all the wonderful things that were in his
country, and it seemed to the people of Ma-ui’s land that they had
nothing that was fine or that could be spoken about. Then Ma-ui called
to the birds. They came and they made music on every side. The visitor
who had boasted so much was made to wonder, and he said that there was
nothing in his country that was so marvellous as the music made by
Ma-ui’s friends, the birds.
Then, that they might be honored by all, Ma-ui said a charm by which
the birds came to be seen by men—the red birds, the i-i-wi and the
aha-hani, and the yellow birds, the o-o and the mamo, and all the other
bright birds. The delight of seeing them was equal to the delight of
hearing the music that they made. Ever afterwards the birds were seen
and heard, and the people all rejoiced in them. This Ma-ui did when he
was still a boy growing up with his brothers and with his sister in his
mother’s house. But this is not counted amongst the great deeds of
Ma-ui the hero.
HOW MA-UI LIFTED UP THE SKY.
Then he lifted up the sky to where it is now. This was the second of
Ma-ui’s great deeds.
When he was growing up in his mother’s house the sky was so low that
the trees touched it and had their leaves flattened out. Men and women
burned with the heat because the sky was so near to them. The clouds
were so close that there was much darkness on the earth. Something had
to be done about it, and Ma-ui made up his mind that he would lift up
the sky.
Somewhere he got a mark tattooed on his arm that was a magic mark and
that gave him great strength. Then he went to lift up the sky. And from
some woman he got a drink that made his strength greater. “Give me to
drink out of your gourd,” he said, “and I will push up the sky.” The
woman gave him her gourd to drink from. Then Ma-ui pushed at the sky.
He lifted it high, to where the trees have their tops now. He pushed at
it again, and he put it where the mountains have their tops now. And
then he pushed it to where it rests, on the tops of the highest
mountains.
Then the men and women were able to walk about all over the earth, and
they had light now and clear air. The trees grew higher and higher, and
they grew more and more fruit. But even to this day their leaves are
flattened out: it is from the time when their leaves were flattened
against the sky.
When the sky was lifted up Ma-ui went and made a kite for himself. From
his mother he got the largest and strongest piece of tapa-cloth she had
ever made, and he formed it into a kite with a frame and cross-sticks
of hau wood. The tail of the kite was fifteen fathoms long, and he got
a line of olona vine for it that was twenty times forty fathoms in
length. He started the kite. But it rose very slowly; the wind barely
held it up.
Then the people said: “Look at Ma-ui! He lifted the sky up, and now he
can’t fly a kite.” Ma-ui was made angry when he heard them say this: he
drew the kite this way and that way, but still he was not able to make
it rise up. He cried out his incantation—
“Strong wind, come;
Soft wind, come”—
but still the kite would not rise.
Then he remembered that in the Valley of Wai-pio there was a wizard who
had control of the winds. Over the mountains and down into the valley
Ma-ui went. He saw the calabash that the wizard kept the winds in, and
he asked him to loose them and direct them to blow along the river to
the place where he was going to fly his kite. Then Ma-ui went back. He
stood with his feet upon the rocks along the bank of the Wai-lu-ku
River; he stood there braced to hold his kite, and where he stood are
the marks of his feet to this day. He called out:
“O winds, winds of Wai-pio,
Come from the calabash—‘the Calabash of perpetual winds.’
O wind, O wind of Hilo,
Come quickly; come with power.”
The call that Ma-ui gave went across the mountains and down into the
valley of Wai-pio. No sooner did he hear it than the wizard opened his
calabash. The winds rushed out. They went into the bay of Hilo, and
they dashed themselves against the water. The call of Ma-ui came to
them:
“O winds, winds of Hilo,
Hurry, hurry and come to me.”
The winds turned from the sea. They rushed along the river. They came
to where Ma-ui stood, and then they saw the great, strange bird that he
held.
They wanted to fall upon that bird and dash it up against the sky. But
the great kite was strong. The winds flung it up and flung it this way
and that way. But they could not carry it off or dash it against the
sky as they wanted to.
Ma-ui rejoiced. How grand it was to hold a kite that the winds strove
to tear away! He called out again:
“O winds, O winds of Hilo,
Come to the mountains, come.”
Then came the west wind that had been dashing up waves in the bay of
Hilo. It joined itself with the north wind and the east wind, the two
winds that had been tearing and pushing at Ma-ui’s kite. Now, although
the kite was made of the strongest tapa, and although it had been
strengthened in every cunning way that Ma-ui knew, it was flung here
and flung there. Ma-ui let his line out; the kite was borne up and up
and above the mountains. And now he cried out to the kite that he had
made:
“Climb up, climb up
To the highest level of the heavens,
To all the sides of the heavens.
Climb thou to thy ancestor,
To the sacred bird in the heavens.”
The three winds joined together, and now they made a fiercer attack
upon Ma-ui’s kite. The winds tore and tossed it. Then the line broke in
Ma-ui’s hands.
The winds flung the kite across the mountains. And then, to punish it
for having dared to face the heavens, they rammed it down into the
volcano, and stirred up the fires against it.
Then Ma-ui made for himself another kite. He flew it, and rejoiced in
the flying of it, and all who saw him wondered at how high his kite
went and how gracefully it bore itself in the heavens. But never again
did he call upon the great winds to help him in his sport. Sometimes he
would fasten his line to the black stones in the bed of the Wai-lu-ku
River, and he would let the kite soar upward and range here and there.
He knew by watching his soaring kite whether it would be dry and
pleasant weather, and he showed his neighbors how they might know it.
“Eh, neighbor,” one would say to another, “it is going to be dry
weather; look how Ma-ui’s kite keeps in the sky.” They knew that they
could go to the fields to work and spread out their tapa to dry, for as
long as the kite soared the rain would not fall.
Ma-ui learned what a strong pull the fierce winds had. He used to bring
his kite with him when he went out on the ocean in his canoe. He would
let it free; then, fastening his line to the canoe, he would let the
wind that pulled the kite pull him along. By flying his kite he learned
how to go more swiftly over the ocean in his canoe, and how to make
further voyages than ever a man made before.
Nevertheless, his kite-flying is not counted amongst the great deeds of
Ma-ui.
HOW MA-UI FISHED UP THE GREAT ISLAND.
Now, although Ma-ui had done deeds as great as these, he was not
thought so very much of in his own house. His brothers complained that
when he went fishing with them he caught no fish, or, if he drew one
up, it was a fish that had been taken on a hook belonging to one of
them, and that Ma-ui had managed to get tangled on to his own line. And
yet Ma-ui had invented many things that his brothers made use of. At
first they had spears with smooth heads on them: if they struck a bird,
the bird was often able to flutter away, drawing from the spear-head
that had pierced a wing. And if they struck through a fish, the fish
was often able to wriggle away. Then Ma-ui put barbs upon his spear,
and his spear-head held the birds and the fish. His brothers copied the
spear-head that he made, and after that they were able to kill and
secure more birds and fish than ever before.
He made many things that they copied, and yet his brothers thought him
a lazy and a shiftless fellow, and they made their mother think the
same about him. They were the better fishermen—that was true; indeed,
if there were no one but Ma-ui to go fishing, Hina-of-the-Fire, his
mother, and Hina-of-the-Sea, his sister, would often go hungry.
At last Ma-ui made up his mind to do some wonderful fishing; he might
not be able to catch the fine fish that his brothers desired—the u-lua
and the pi-mo-e—but he would take up something from the bottom of the
sea that would make his brothers forget that he was the lazy and the
shiftless one.
He had to make many plans and go on many adventures before he was ready
for this great fishing. First he had to get a fish-hook that was
different from any fish-hook that had ever been in the world before. In
those days fish-hooks were made out of bones—there was nothing else to
make fish-hooks out of—and Ma-ui would have to get a wonderful bone to
form into a hook. He went down into the underworld to get that bone.
He went to where his ancestress was. On one side she was dead and on
the other side she was a living woman. From the side of her that was
dead Ma-ui took a bone—her jaw-bone—and out of this bone he made his
fish-hook. There was never a fish-hook like it in the world before, and
it was called “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” meaning “Made fast to the heavens.”
He told no one about the wonderful fish-hook he had made for himself.
He had to get a different bait from any bait that had ever been used in
the world before. His mother had sacred birds, the alae, and he asked
her to give him one of them for bait. She gave him one of her birds.
Then Ma-ui, with his bait and his hook hidden, and with a line that he
had made from the strongest olona vines, went down to his brothers’
canoe. “Here is Ma-ui,” they said when they saw him, “here is Ma-ui,
the lazy and the shiftless, and we have sworn that we will never let
him come again with us in our canoe.” They pushed out when they saw him
coming; they paddled away, although he begged them to take him with
them.
He waited on the beach. His brothers came back, and they had to tell
him that they had caught no fish. Then he begged them to go back to sea
again and to let him go this time in their canoe. They let him in, and
they paddled off. “Farther and farther out, my brothers,” said Ma-ui;
“out there is where the u-lua and the pi-mo-e are.” They paddled far
out. They let down their lines, but they caught no fish. “Where are the
u-lua and the pi-mo-e that you spoke of?” said his brothers to him.
Still he told them to go farther and farther out. At last they got
tired with paddling, and they wanted to go back.
Then Ma-ui put a sail upon the canoe. Farther and farther out into the
ocean they went. One of the brothers let down a line, and a great fish
drew on it. They pulled. But what came out of the depths was a shark.
They cut the line and let the shark away. The brothers were very tired
now. “Oh, Ma-ui,” they said, “as ever, thou art lazy and shiftless.
Thou hast brought us out all this way, and thou wilt do nothing to help
us. Thou hast let down no line in all the sea we have crossed.”
It was then that Ma-ui let down his line with the magic hook upon it,
the hook that was baited with the struggling alae bird. Down, down went
the hook that was named “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” “Made fast to the heavens.”
Down through the waters the hook and the bait went. Ka-uni ho-kahi, Old
One Tooth, who holds fast the land to the bottom of the sea, was there.
When the sacred bird came near him he took it in his mouth. And the
magic hook that Ma-ui had made held fast in his jaws.
Ma-ui felt the pull upon the line. He fastened the line to the canoe,
and he bade his brothers paddle their hardest, for now the great fish
was caught. He dipped his own paddle into the sea, and he made the
canoe dash on.
The brothers felt a great weight grow behind the canoe. But still they
paddled on and on. Weighty and more weighty became the catch; harder
and harder it became to pull it along. As they struggled on Ma-ui
chanted a magic chant, and the weight came with them.
“O Island, O great Island,
O Island, O great Island!
Why art thou
Sulkily biting, biting below?
Beneath the earth
The power is felt,
The foam is seen:
Come,
O thou loved grandchild
Of Kanaloa.”
On and on the canoe went, and heavier and heavier grew what was behind
them. At last one of the brothers looked back. At what he saw he
screamed out in affright. For there, rising behind them, a whole land
was rising up, with mountains upon it. The brother dropped his paddle
when he saw what had been fished up; as he dropped his paddle the line
that was fastened to the jaws of old Ka-uni ho-kahi broke.
What Ma-ui fished up would have been a mainland, only that his
brother’s paddle dropped and the line broke. Then only an island came
up out of the water. If more land had come up, all the Islands that we
know would have been joined in one.
There are people who say that his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, was near at
the time of that great fishing. They say she came floating out on a
calabash. When Ma-ui let down the magic hook with their mother’s sacred
bird upon it, Hina-of-the-Sea dived down and put the hook into the
mouth of Old One Tooth, and then pulled at the line to let Ma-ui know
that the hook was in his jaws. Some people say this, and it may be the
truth. But whether or not, every one, on every Island in the Great
Ocean, from Kahiki-mo-e to Hawaii nei, knows that Ma-ui fished up a
great Island for men to live on. And this fishing was the third of
Ma-ui’s great deeds.
HOW MA-UI SNARED THE SUN AND MADE HIM GO MORE SLOWLY ACROSS THE
HEAVENS.
The Sky had been lifted up, and another great Island had come from the
grip of Old One Tooth and was above the waters. The world was better
now for men and women to live in. But still there were miseries in it,
and the greatest of these miseries was on account of the heedlessness
of the Sun.
For the Sun in those days made his way too quickly across the world. He
hurried so that little of his heat got to the plants and the fruits,
and it took years and years for them to ripen. The farmers working on
their patches would not have time in the light of a day to put down
their crop into the ground, so quickly the Sun would rush across the
heavens, and the fishermen would barely have time to launch their
canoes and get to the fishing grounds when the darkness would come on.
And the women’s tasks were never finished. It was theirs to make the
tapa-cloth: a woman would begin at one end of the board to beat the
bark with her four-sided mallet, and she would be only at the middle of
the board by the time the sunset came. When she was ready to go on with
the work next day, the Sun would be already halfway across the heavens.
Ma-ui, when he was a child, used to watch his mother making tapa, and
as he grew up he pitied her more and more because of all the toil and
trouble that she had. She would break the branches from the ma-ma-ka
trees and from the wau-ke trees and soak them in water until their bark
was easily taken off. Then she would take off the outer bark, leaving
the inner bark to be worked upon. She would take the bundles of the wet
inner bark and lay them on the tapa-board and begin pounding them with
little clubs. And then she would use her four-sided mallet and beat all
the soft stuff into little thin sheets. Then she would paste the little
sheets together, making large cloths. This was tapa—the tapa that it
was every woman’s business in those days to make. As soon as morning
reddened the clouds Ma-ui’s mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, would begin her
task: she would begin beating the softened bark at one end of the
board, and she would be only in the middle of the board when the sunset
came. And when she managed to get the tapa made she could never get it
dried in a single day, so quickly the Sun made his way across the
heavens. Ma-ui pitied his mother because of her unceasing toil.
He greatly blamed the Sun for his inconsiderateness of the people of
the world. He took to watching the Sun. He began to know the path by
which the Sun came over the great mountain Ha-le-a-ka-la (but in those
days it was not called Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun, but
A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the Sun). Through a great chasm in the side
of this mountain the Sun used to come.
He told his mother that he was going to do something to make the Sun
have more considerateness for the men and women of the world. “You will
not be able to make him do anything about it,” she said; “the Sun
always went swiftly, and he will always go swiftly.” But Ma-ui said
that he would find a way to make the Sun remember that there were
people in the world and that they were not at all pleased with the way
he was going on.
Then his mother said: “If you are going to force the Sun to go more
slowly you must prepare yourself for a great battle, for the Sun is a
great creature, and he has much energy. Go to your grandmother who
lives on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la,” said she (but it was called
A-hele-a-ka-la then), “and beg her to give you her counsel, and also to
give you a weapon to battle with the Sun.”
So Ma-ui went to his grandmother who lived on the side of the great
mountain. Ma-ui’s grandmother was the one who cooked the bananas that
the Sun ate as he came through the great chasm in the mountain. “You
must go to the place where there is a large wili-wili tree growing,”
said his mother. “There the Sun stops to eat the bananas that your
grandmother cooks for him. Stay until the rooster that watches beside
the wili-wili tree crows three times. Your grandmother will come out
then with a bunch of bananas. When she lays them down, do you take them
up. She will bring another bunch out, and do you take that up too. When
all her bananas are gone she will search for the one who took them.
Then do you show yourself to her. Tell her that you are Ma-ui and that
you belong to Hina-of-the-Fire.”
So Ma-ui went up the side of the mountain that is now called
He-le-a-ka-la, but that then was called A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the
Sun. He came to where a great wili-wili tree was growing. There he
waited. The rooster crew three times, and then an old woman came out
with a bunch of bananas. He knew that this was his grandmother. She
laid the bananas down to cook them, and as she did so Ma-ui snatched
them away. When she went to pick up the bunch she cried out, “Where are
the bananas that I have to cook for my Lord, the Sun?” She went within
and got another bunch, and this one, too, Ma-ui snatched away. This he
did until the last bunch of bananas that his grandmother had was taken.
She was nearly blind, so she could not find him with her eyes. She
sniffed around, and at last she got the smell of a man. “Who are you?”
she said. “I am Ma-ui, and I belong to Hina-of-the-Fire,” said he.
“What have you come for?” asked his grandmother. “I have come to
chastise the Sun and to make him go more slowly across the heavens. He
goes so fast now that my mother cannot dry the tapa that she takes all
the days of the year to beat out.”
The old woman considered all that Ma-ui said to her. She knew that he
was a hero born, because the birds sang, the pebbles rumbled, the grass
withered, the smoke hung low, the rainbow appeared, the thunder was
heard, the hairless dogs were seen, and even the ants in the grass were
heard to sing in his praise. She decided to give help to him. And she
told him what preparations he was to make for his battle with the Sun.
First of all he was to get sixteen of the strongest ropes that ever
were made. So as to be sure they were the strongest, he was to knit
them himself. And he was to make nooses for them out of the hair of the
head of his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea. When the ropes were ready he was
to come back to her, and she would show him what else he had to do.
Ma-ui made the sixteen ropes; he made them out of the strongest fibre,
and his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, gave him the hair of her head to make
into nooses. Then, with the ropes and the nooses upon them, Ma-ui went
back to his grandmother. She told him where to set the nooses, and she
gave him a magic stone axe with which to do battle with the Sun.
He set the nooses as snares for the Sun, and he dug a hole beside the
roots of the wili-wili tree, and in that hole he hid himself. Soon the
first ray of light, the first leg of the Sun, came over the mountain
wall. It was caught in one of the nooses that Ma-ui had set. One by one
the legs of the Sun came over the rim, and one by one they were caught
in the nooses. One leg was left hanging down the side of the mountain:
it was hard for the Sun to move that leg. At last this last leg came
slowly over the edge of the mountain and was caught in the snare. Then
Ma-ui gathered up the ropes and tied them to the great wili-wili tree.
When the Sun saw that his sixteen legs were held fast by the nooses
that Ma-ui had set he tried to back down the mountain-side and into the
sea again. But the ropes held him, and the wili-wili tree stood the
drag of the ropes. The Sun could not get away. Then he turned all his
burning strength upon Ma-ui. They fought. The man began to strike at
the Sun with his magic axe of stone; and never before did the Sun get
such a beating. “Give me my life,” said the Sun. “I will give you your
life,” said Ma-ui, “if you promise to go slowly across the heavens.” At
last the Sun promised to do what Ma-ui asked him.
They entered into an agreement with each other, Ma-ui and the Sun.
There should be longer days, the Sun making his course slower. But
every six months, in the winter, the Sun might go as fast as he had
been in the habit of going. Then Ma-ui let the Sun out of the snares
which he had set for him. But, lest he should ever forget the agreement
he had made and take to travelling swiftly again, Ma-ui left all the
ropes and the nooses on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la, so that he might see
them every day that he came across the rim of the mountain. And the
mountain was not called A-hele-a-ka-la, the Rays of the Sun, any more,
but Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun. After that came the saying of
the people, “Long shall be the daily journey of the Sun, and he shall
give light for all the peoples’ toil.” And Ma-ui’s mother,
Hina-of-the-Fire, learned that she could pound on the tapa-board until
she was tired, and the farmers could plant and take care of their
crops, and the fishermen could go out to the deep sea and fish and come
back, and the fruits and the plants got heat enough to make them ripen
in their season.
HOW MA-UI WON FIRE FOR MEN.
Ma-ui’s mother must have known about fire and the use of fire; else why
should she have been called Hina-of-the-Fire, and how did it come that
her birds, the alae, knew where fire was hidden and how to make it
blaze up? Hina must have known about fire. But her son had to search
and search for fire. The people who lived in houses on the Islands did
not know of it: they had to eat raw roots and raw fish, and they had to
suffer the cold. It was for them that Ma-ui wanted to get fire; it was
for them that he went down to the lower world, and that he went
searching through the upper world for it.
In Kahiki-mo-e they have a tale about Ma-ui that the Hawaiians do not
know. There they tell how he went down to the lower world and sought
out his great-great-grandmother, Ma-hui’a. She was glad to see Ma-ui,
of whom she had heard in the lower world; and when he asked her to give
him fire to take to the upper world, she plucked a nail off her finger
and gave it to him.
In this nail, fire burned. Ma-ui went to the upper world with it. But
in crossing a stream of water he let the nail drop into it. And so he
lost the fire that his great-great-grandmother had given him.
He went back to her again. And again Ma-hui’a plucked off a finger-nail
and gave it to him. But when he went to the upper world and went to
cross the stream, he let this burning nail also drop into the water.
Again he went back, and his great-great-grandmother plucked off a third
nail for him. And this went on, Ma-ui letting the nails fall into the
water, and Ma-hui’a giving him the nails off her fingers, until at last
all the nails of all her fingers were given to him.
But still he went on letting the burning nails fall into the water that
he had to cross, and at last the nails of his great-great-grandmother’s
toes as well as the nails of her fingers were given to him—all but the
nail on the last of her toes. Ma-ui went back to her to get this last
nail. Then Ma-hui’a became blazing angry; she plucked the nail off, but
instead of giving it to him she flung it upon the ground.
Fire poured out of the nail and took hold on everything. Ma-ui ran to
the upper world, and Ma-hui’a in her anger ran after him. He dashed
into the water. But now the forests were blazing, and the earth was
burning, and the water was boiling. Ma-ui ran on, and Ma-hui’a ran
behind him. As he ran he chanted a magic incantation for rain to come,
so that the burning might be put out:
“To the roaring thunder;
To the great rain—the long rain;
To the drizzling rain—the small rain;
To the rain pattering on the leaves.
These are the storms, the storms
Cause them to fall;
To pour in torrents.”
The rain came on—the long rain, the small rain, the rain that patters
on the leaves; storms came, and rain in torrents. The fire that raged
in the forests and burned on the ground was drowned out. And Ma-hui’a,
who had followed him, was nearly-drowned by the torrents of rain. She
saw her fire, all the fire that was in the lower and in the upper
worlds, being quenched by the rain.
She gathered up what fragments of fire she could, and she hid them in
barks of different trees so that the rain could not get at them and
quench them. Ma-ui’s mother must have known where his
great-great-grandmother hid the fire. If she did not, her sacred birds,
the alae, knew it. They were able to take the barks of the trees and,
by rubbing them together, to bring out fire.
In Hawaii they tell how Ma-ui and his brothers used to go out fishing
every day, and how, as soon as they got far out to sea, they would see
smoke rising on the mountain-side. “Behold,” they would say, “there is
a fire. Whose can it be?” “Let us hasten to the shore and cook our fish
at that fire,” another would say.
So, with the fish that they had caught, Ma-ui and his brothers would
hasten to the shore. The swiftest of them would run up the
mountain-side. But when he would get to where the smoke had been, all
he would see would be the alae scratching clay over burnt-out sticks.
The alae would leave the place where they had been seen, and Ma-ui
would follow them from place to place, hoping to catch them while their
fire was lighted.
He would send his brothers off fishing, and he himself would watch for
the smoke from the fire that the alae would kindle. But they would
kindle no fire on the days that he did not go out in the canoe with his
brothers. “We cannot have our cooked bananas to-day,” the old bird
would say to the young birds, “for the swift son of Hina is somewhere
near, and he would come upon us before we put out our fire. And
remember that the guardian of the fire told us never to show a man
where it is hidden or how it is taken out of its hiding place.”
Then Ma-ui understood that the bird watched for his going and that they
made no fire until they saw him out at sea in his canoe. He knew that
they counted the men that went out, and that if he was not in the
number they did no cooking that day. Every time he went in the canoe he
saw smoke rising on the mountain-side.
Then Ma-ui thought of a trick to play on them—on the stingy alae that
would not give fire, but left men to eat raw roots and raw fish. He
rolled up a piece of tapa, and he put it into the canoe, making it like
a man. Then he hid near the shore. The brothers went fishing, and the
birds counted the figures in the canoe. “The swift son of Hina has gone
fishing: we can have cooked bananas to-day.” “Make the fire, make the
fire, until we cook our bananas,” said the young alae.
So they gathered the wood together, and they rubbed the barks, and they
made the fire. The smoke rose up from it, and swift Ma-ui ran up the
mountain-side. He came upon the flock of birds just as the old one was
dashing water upon the embers. He caught her by the neck and held her.
“I will kill you,” he said, “for hiding fire from men.”
“If you kill me,” said the old alae, “there will be no one to show you
how to get fire.”
“Show me how to get fire,” said Ma-ui, “and I will let you go.”
The cunning alae tried to deceive Ma-ui. She thought she would get him
off his guard, that he would let go of her, and that she could fly
away. “Go to the reeds and rub them together, and you will get fire,”
she said.
Ma-ui went to the reeds and rubbed them together. But still he held the
bird by the neck. Nothing came out of the reeds but moisture. He
squeezed her neck. “If you kill me, there will be no one to tell you
where to get fire,” said the cunning bird, still hoping to get him off
his guard. “Go to the taro leaves and rub them together, and you will
get fire.”
Ma-ui held to the bird’s neck. He went to the taro leaves and rubbed
them together, but no fire came. He squeezed her neck harder. The bird
was nearly dead now. But still she tried to deceive the man. “Go to the
banana stumps and rub them together, and you will get fire,” she said.
He went to the banana stumps and rubbed them together. But still no
fire came. Then he gave the bird a squeeze that brought her near her
death. She showed him then the trees to go to—the hau tree and the
sandalwood tree. He took the barks of the trees and rubbed them, and
they gave fire. And the sweet-smelling sandalwood he called
“ili-aha”—that is, “fire bark”—because fire came most easily from the
bark of that tree. With sticks from these trees Ma-ui went to men. He
showed them how to get fire by rubbing them together. And never
afterwards had men to eat fish raw and roots raw. They could always
have fire now.
The first stick he lighted he rubbed on the head of the bird that
showed him at last where the fire was hidden. And that is the reason
why the alae, the mud-hen, has a red streak on her head to this day.
HOW MA-UI OVERCAME KUNA LOA THE LONG EEL.
Hina-of-the-Fire lived in a cave that the waters of the river streamed
over, a cave that always had a beautiful rainbow glimmering across it.
While her sons were away no enemy could come to Hina in this cave, for
the walls of it went up straight and smooth. And there at the opening
of the cave she used to sit, beating out her tapa in the long days that
came after Ma-ui had snared the Sun and had made him go more slowly
across the heavens.
In the river below there was one who was an enemy to Hina. This was
Kuna Loa, the Long Eel. Once Kuna Loa had seen Hina on the bank of the
river, and he had wanted her to leave her cave and come to his abode.
But Hina-of-the-Fire would not go near the Long Eel. Then he had gone
to her, and he had lashed her with his tail, covering her with the
slime of the river. She told about the insults he had given her, and
Ma-ui drove the Long Eel up the river, where he took shelter in the
deep pools. Ma-ui broke down the banks of the deep pools with thrusts
of his spear, but Kuna Loa, the Long Eel, was still able to escape from
him. Now Ma-ui had gone away, and his mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, kept
within the cave, the smooth rock of which Kuna Loa could not climb.
The Long Eel came down the river. He saw Hina sitting in the mouth of
the cave that had the rainbow glimmering across it, and he was filled
with rage and a wish to destroy her. He took a great rock and he put it
across the stream, filling it from bank to bank. Then he lashed about
in the water in his delight at the thought of what was going to happen
to Hina.
She heard a deeper sound in the water than she had ever heard before as
she sat there. She looked down and she saw that the water was nearer to
the mouth of the cave than she had ever seen it before. Higher and
higher it came. And then Hina heard the voice of Kuna Loa rejoicing at
the destruction that was coming to her. He raised himself up in the
water and cried out to her: “Now your mighty son cannot help you. I
will drown you with the waters of the river before he comes back to
you, Hina.”
And Hina-of-the-Fire cried “Alas, Alas,” as she watched the waters
mount up and up, for she knew that Ma-ui and her other sons were far
away, and that there was none to help her against Kuna Loa, the Long
Eel. But, even as she lamented, something was happening to aid Hina.
For Ma-ui had placed above her cave a cloud that served her—“Ao-opua,”
“The Warning Cloud.” Over the cave it rose now, giving itself a strange
shape: Ma-ui would see it and be sure to know by its sign that
something dire was happening in his mother’s cave.
He was then on the mountain Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun. He saw
the strangely shaped cloud hanging over her cave, and he knew that some
danger threatened his mother, Hina-of-the-Fire. He dashed down the side
of the mountain, bringing with him the magic axe that his grandmother
had given him for his battle with the Sun. He sprang into his canoe.
With two strokes of his paddle he crossed the channel and was at the
mouth of the Wai-lu-ku River. The bed of the river was empty of water,
and Ma-ui left his canoe on the stones and went up towards Hina’s cave.
The water had mounted up and up and had gone into the cave, and was
spilling over Hina’s tapa-board. She was lamenting, and her heart was
broken with the thought that neither Ma-ui nor his brothers would come
until the river had drowned her in her cave.
Ma-ui was then coming up the bed of the river. He saw the great stone
across the stream, and he heard Kuna Loa rejoicing over the destruction
that was coming to Hina in her cave. With one stroke of his axe he
broke the rock across. The water came through the break. He struck the
rocks and smashed them. The river flowed down once more, and Hina was
safe in her cave.
Kuna Loa heard the crash of the axe on the rock, and he knew that Ma-ui
had come. He dashed up the stream to hide himself again in the deep
pools. Ma-ui showed his mother that she was safe, and then he went
following the Long Eel.
Kuna Loa had gone into a deep pool. Ma-ui flung burning stones into the
water of that pool, making it boil up. Then Kuna Loa dashed into
another pool. From pool to pool Ma-ui chased him, making the pools boil
around him. (And there they boil to this day, although Kuna Loa is no
longer there.) At last the Eel found a cave in the bottom of one of the
pools, and he went and hid in it, and Ma-ui could not find him there,
nor could the hot stones that Ma-ui threw into the water, making it
boil, drive Kuna Loa out.
Hina thought she was safe from the Long Eel after that. She thought
that his skin was so scalded by the boiling water that he had died in
his cave. Down the river bank for water she would go, and sometimes she
would stand on the bank all wreathed in flowers.
But one day, as she was standing on the bank of the river, Kuna Loa
suddenly came up. Hina fled before him. The Eel was between her and her
cave, and she could not get back to her shelter. She fled through the
woods. And as she fled she shrieked out chants to Ma-ui: her chants
went through the woods, and along the side of the mountain, and across
the sea; they came at last up the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la, where her son
Ma-ui was.
There were many people in the places that Hina fled through, but they
could do nothing to help her against the Long Eel. He came swiftly
after her. The people in the villages that they went through stood and
watched the woman and the Eel that pursued her.
Where would she go now? The Long Eel was close behind her. Then Hina
saw a bread-fruit tree with great branches, and she climbed into it.
Kuna Loa wound himself around the tree and came after her. But the
branch that Hina was in was lifted up and up by the tree, and the Long
Eel could not come to her.
And then Ma-ui came. He had dashed down the side of the mountain and
had crossed the channel with two strokes of his paddles and had hurried
along the track made by the Long Eel. Now he saw his mother in the
branch that kept mounting up, and he saw Kuna Loa winding himself up
after her. Ma-ui went into the tree. He struck the Eel a terrible blow
and brought him to the ground. Then he sprang down and cut his head
off. With other blows of his axe he cut the Eel all to pieces. He flung
the head and the tail of Kuna Loa into the sea. The head turned into
fish of many kinds, and the tail became the large conger eel of the
sea. Other parts of the body turned into sea monsters of different
kinds. And the blood of Kuna Loa, as it fell into the fresh water,
became the common eels. The fresh and the salt water eels came into the
world in this way, and Ma-ui, by killing the Long Eel, wrought the
sixth of his great deeds.
THE SEARCH THAT MA-UI’S BROTHER MADE FOR HIS SISTER HINA-OF-THE-SEA.
Ma-ui had four brothers, and each of them was named Ma-ui. The doer of
the great deeds was known as “the skillful Ma-ui,” and the other four
brothers were called “the forgetful Ma-uis.”
But there was one brother who should not have been called “forgetful.”
He was the eldest brother, Ma-ui Mua, and he was sometimes called
Lu-pe. He may have been forgetful about many things that the skillful
Ma-ui took account of, but he was not forgetful of his sister, of
Hina-of-the-Sea.
His great and skillful brother had set Hina-of-the-Sea wandering. She
was married, and her husband often went on journeys with the skillful
Ma-ui. And once Ma-ui became angry with him because he ate the bait
that they had taken with them for fishing; he became angry with his
sister’s husband, and in his anger he uttered a spell over him, and
changed his form into the form of a dog.
When Hina-of-the-Sea knew that her husband was lost to her she went
down to the shore and she chanted her own death-song:
“I weep, I call upon the steep billows of the sea,
And on him, the great, the ocean god;
The monsters, all now hidden,
To come and bury me,
Who am now wrapped in mourning.
Let the waves wear their mourning, too,
And sleep as sleeps the dead.”
And after she had chanted this, she threw herself into the sea.
But the waves did not drown her. They carried her to a far land. There
were no people there; according to the ancient chant—
“The houses of Lima Loa stand,
But there are no people;
They are at Mana.”
The people were by the sea, and two who were fishermen found her. They
carried her to their hut, and when they had taken the sea-weed and the
sea-moss from her body they saw what a beautiful woman she was. They
brought her to their chief, and the chief took Hina-of-the-Sea for his
wife.
But after a while he became forgetful of her. After another while he
abused her. She had a child now, but she was very lonely, for she was
in a far and a strange land.
“The houses of Lima Loa stand,
But there are no people;
They are at Mana.”
She was not forgotten, for Ma-ui Mua, her eldest brother, thought of
her. In Kahiki-mo-e they tell of his search for her, and they say that
when he heard of her casting herself into the sea, he took to his canoe
and went searching all over the sea for her. He found new Islands,
Islands that no one had ever been on before, and he went from Island to
Island, ever hoping to find Hina-of-the-Sea. Far, far he went, and he
found neither his sister nor any one who knew about her.
“The houses of Lima Loa stand,
But there are no people;
They are at Mana.”
And every day Hina-of-the-Sea would go down to the shore of the land
she was on, and she would call on her eldest brother:
“O Lu-pe! Come over!
Take me and my child!”
Now one day, as Hina cried out on the beach, there came a canoe towards
her. There was a man in the canoe; but Hina, hardly noticing him, still
cried to the waves and the winds:
“O Lu-pe! Come over!
Take me and my child!”
The man came up on the beach. He was worn with much travel, and he was
white and old-looking. He heard the cry that was sent to the waves and
the winds, and he cried back an answer:
“It is Lu-pe, yes, Lu-pe,
The eldest brother;
And I am here.”
He knew Hina-of-the-Sea. He took her and her child in his canoe,
rejoicing that his long search was over at last and that he had a
sister again. He took her and her child to one of the Islands which he
had discovered.
And there Hina-of-the-Sea lived happily with her eldest brother, Ma-ui
Mua, and there her child grew up to manhood. The story of her eldest
brother’s search for Hina is not told in Hawaii nei, and one has to go
to Kahiki-mo-e to hear it. But in Hawaii nei they tell of a beautiful
land that Ma-ui the Skillful came to in search of some one. It is the
land, perhaps, that his brother and sister lived in—the beautiful land
that is called Moana-liha-i-ka-wao-ke-le.
HOW MA-UI STROVE TO WIN IMMORTALITY FOR MEN.
Would you hear the seventh and last of great Ma-ui’s deeds? They do not
tell of this deed in Hawaii nei, but they tell of it in Kahiki-mo-e.
The last was the greatest of all Ma-ui’s deeds, for it was his
dangerous labor then to win the greatest boon for men—the boon of
everlasting life.
He heard of the Goblin-goddess who is called Hina-nui-ke-po, Great
Hina-of-the-Night. It is she who brings death on all creatures. But if
one could take the heart out of her body and give it to all the
creatures of the earth to eat, they would live for ever, and death
would be no more in the world.
They tell how the Moon bathes in the Waters of Life, and comes back to
the world with her life renewed. And once Ma-ui caught and held the
Moon. He said to her, “Let Death be short, and as you return with new
strength let it be that men shall come back from Death with new
strength.” But the Moon said to Ma-ui, “Rather let Death be long, so
that men may sigh and have sorrow. When a man dies, let him go into
darkness and become as earth, so that those whom he leaves behind may
weep and mourn for him.” But for all that the Moon said to Ma-ui, he
would not have it that men should go into the darkness for ever and
become as earth. The Moon showed him where Hina-of-the-Night had her
abode. He looked over to her Island and saw her. Her eyes shone through
the distance; he saw her great teeth that were like volcanic glass and
her mouth that was wide like the mouth of a fish; he saw her hair that
floated all around her like seaweed in the sea.
He saw her and was afraid; even great Ma-ui was made afraid by the
Goblin-goddess, Great Hina-of-the-Night. But he remembered that he had
said that he would find a way of giving everlasting life to men and to
all creatures, and he thought and thought of how he could come to the
Goblin-goddess and take the heart out of her body.
It was his task then to draw all creatures to him and to have them
promise him that they would help him against the Goblin-goddess. And
when at last he was ready to go against her the birds went with him. He
came to the Island where she was, Great Hina-of-the-Night. She was
sleeping, and all her guards were around her. Ma-ui passed through her
guards. He prepared to enter her terrible open mouth, and bring back
her heart to give to all the creatures of the earth.
And at last he stood ready to go between the jaws that had the fearful
teeth that were sharp like volcanic glass. He stood there in the light
of a sun-setting, his body tall and fine and tattooed all over with the
histories of his great deeds. He stood there, and then he gave warning
to all the birds that none of them was to sing or to laugh until he was
outside her jaws again with the heart of the Goblin-goddess in his
hands.
He went within the jaws of Great Hina-of-the-Night. He passed the
fearful teeth that were sharp like volcanic glass. He went down into
her stomach. And then he seized upon her heart. He came back again as
far as her jaws, and he saw the sky beyond them.
Then a bird sang or a bird laughed—either the e-le-pa-io sang, or
Paka-kai the water-wagtail laughed—and the Goblin-goddess wakened up.
She caught Ma-ui in her great teeth, and she tore him across. There was
darkness then, and the crying of all the birds.
Thus died Ma-ui who raised the sky and who fished up the land, who made
the Sun go more slowly across the heavens, and who brought fire to men.
Thus died Ma-ui, with the Meat of Immortality in his hands. And since
his death no one has ever ventured near the lair of Hina-nui-ke-po, the
Goblin-goddess.
AU-KE-LE THE SEEKER.
In a land that is now lost, in Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country that Supports
the Heavens, there lived a King whose name was Iku. He had twelve
children, and of these eleven grew up without ever having received any
favor or any promise from their father.
But when the twelfth child was born—Au-ke-le was his name—his father
took him up in his arms, and he promised him all the honor and power
and glory that was his, and he promised him the kingship of
Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country that Supports the Heavens.
The other children were angry when they saw their father take little
Au-ke-le up in his arms, and they were more angry when they heard the
promises that were made to him. And the eldest brother, who was the
angriest of all, said, “I am the eldest born, and my father never made
such promises to me, and he never took me up in his arms and fondled
me.” And this brother, who was now a man grown, went from before his
father, and his other brothers went with him.
Au-ke-le grew up. His father gave him many of his possessions—feather
cloaks, and whale-tooth necklaces, and many sharp and polished weapons.
He grew up to be the handsomest of handsome youths, with a body that
was straight and faultless. One day, knowing that they had gone to play
games in a certain house, he went to follow his brothers. But Iku, his
father, said to him, “Do not go where your brothers have gone; they are
angry with you, and they have always been angry with you, and it may be
that they will do some harm to you in that place.” But in spite of the
words of his father Au-ke-le followed his brothers. He came to the
house where his brothers were, and he shot his arrow into it. One of
his brothers took up the arrow and said, “This is not a stranger’s
arrow; this is an arrow from our own house; see, it is twisted.” The
eldest brother, who was the angriest of all, took up the arrow and
broke it to pieces. He sent the others outside to invite Au-ke-le
within the house. And Au-ke-le, believing in the kindness of his
brothers, and thinking they were going to let him join in their games,
came within.
But they had made a plan against him. They laid hold upon him when he
came within the house, and, at the words of the eldest brother, they
uncovered a pit and they flung Au-ke-le down into it.
In that pit there lived a mo-o whose name was Ka-mo’o-i-na-nea. This
mo-o was really Au-ke-le’s grandmother. She had been a mortal woman;
but she had transformed herself into a mo-o, and now she lived in that
pit, and she devoured any creature that came into it.
The angry brother called out, “Mo-o, Mo-o, here is your food; eat it.”
Then he went away. But a younger brother who felt kindly to Au-ke-le
whispered down, “Do not eat this youth, Mo-o, for he is your own
grandson.” The mo-o heard the words of both. She came before Au-ke-le
and she signed for him to follow her. He followed, and they came out on
the dry sand that was before the ocean.
Then the mo-o spoke to Au-ke-le her grandson. “There is a land beyond
this sea,” she said, “a land that I travelled through in my young days
before I took on this dragon-form. Very few people live in that land.
You must sail to it; living there you will become great and wise.
“The name of that land is Ka-la-ke’e-nui-a-Kane. The mountains are so
high that the stars rest upon them. The people who live there are
Na-maka-o-Kahai, the Queen, and her four brothers, who take the forms
of birds, and two women-servants. The watchers of her land are a dog
called Mo-e-la and a great and fierce bird called Ha-lu-lu.
“I will give you things to take with you. Here is a calabash that has a
Magic in it. It has an axe in it also that you can use. And here is
food that will last for the longest voyage. It is a leaf, but if you
put it to your lips it will take away your hunger and your thirst. I
give you my skirt of feathers also; the touch of it will bring death to
your enemies.” Then his mo-o grandmother left him, and Au-ke-le was
upon the sea-shore with a calabash that had Magic in it, with the
leaves that stayed his hunger and his thirst, and with the skirt of
feathers that would destroy his enemies. And he had in his heart the
resolve to go to the land that his mo-o grandmother had told him about.
In the meantime Iku-mai-lani, the kind brother, had gone back to his
father’s house. Iku asked what had happened to his favorite son. Then
Iku-mai-lani, weeping, told his father that the boy had been flung into
the pit where the mo-o was and that he feared the mo-o had devoured him
as she had devoured others. Then the father and mother of Au-ke-le
wept.
As they were weeping he came within the house. His mother and father
rejoiced over him, and Iku-mai-lani hurried to give the news to his
brothers. They were building a canoe, and when the eldest brother heard
of Au-ke-le’s escape, and heard the sound of rejoicings in his father’s
house, he gave orders to have all preparations made for sailing and to
have the food cooked and every one aboard, that they might sail at once
from the land.
It was then that Au-ke-le came up to where they were. He called out to
his kind brother, to Iku-mai-lani, and asked him what he might do to be
let go in the canoe with them. His brother said: “How can we take you
when it is on your account only that we are going away from the country
we were born in? We are going because you only of all of us have been
promised the kingdom and the glory that belongs to our father. And we
are going because we tried to kill you, and now are ashamed of what we
did.”
Still Au-ke-le craved to be let go with them. Then the kind brother
said to him: “You cannot gain your way through us. But with our eldest
brother is a boy—a little son whom he is taking along, and for whom he
has a great love. If the child of our eldest brother should ask you to
come on board you will surely be let come.”
Then Au-ke-le went to the canoe. And the little boy who was his eldest
brother’s son saw him and clapped his hands and called out to him, “My
uncle, come on board of the ship and be one of us.”
Au-ke-le then went on board. The eldest brother, he who had been the
most angry with him, let Au-ke-le stay because his young son had
brought him on board. Au-ke-le then sent the men back to his father’s
house for the things that his grandmother had given him—for the
calabash with the Magic in it, and for the feather dress. The men
brought these things to him; then the paddlers took up their paddles;
the canoe went into the deep sea, and Au-ke-le and his brothers
departed from the land of Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country that Supports the
Heavens.
They sailed far and far away, and no land came to their sight. All the
food they had brought in the canoe was eaten, and they no longer had
food or drink. Their men died of hunger and thirst. Au-ke-le’s brothers
went below, and they stayed in the bottom of the canoe, for they were
waiting for death to come to them.
At last the boy who was the son of the eldest brother went down to seek
his father. He was lying there, too weak to move by reason of his
hunger and thirst. And Au-ke-le’s eldest brother said to his son: “How
pitiful it is for you, my son! For my own life I have no regret, for I
have been many days in the world; but I weep for you, who have lived so
short a time and have but so short a time to live. Here is all I have
to give you—a joint of sugar cane.” Then the boy replied, “I have no
need for food—my uncle Au-ke-le has a certain leaf which he puts to my
lips, and with that leaf my hunger and my thirst are satisfied.” His
father hardly heard what he said, so weak he had become. Then the boy
went back to Au-ke-le.
And when he came before his uncle again tears were streaming down his
face. “Why do you weep?” Au-ke-le asked. “I am weeping for my father,
who is almost dead from hunger.” Au-ke-le said: “You too would have
died from hunger had I not come with you. I am hated by your father as
his most bitter enemy, but I would act as a brother acts. Now let us go
to where my brothers are.”
So they went below. Au-ke-le went to each of his brothers and put the
leaf to their lips. It was as if each of them had got food and drink.
Their faintness went from them, and they were able to get about the
ship once more.
Soon afterwards they came in sight of land; Au-ke-le knew that this was
the country that his mo-o grandmother had told him about. And,
remembering what he had been told about the dangers of this land, he
asked his brothers to let him take charge of the canoe, so that they
might avoid these dangers. His brothers said, “Why did you not build a
canoe for yourself, so that you might take charge of it and give orders
about it?” Au-ke-le said, “If you give me charge of the canoe, we shall
be saved; but if you take charge yourselves, we shall be destroyed.”
His brothers laughed at him.
In a while they saw birds approaching the ship—four birds. Au-ke-le,
remembering what his mo-o grandmother had told him, knew that these
were the Queen’s brothers. They came and lit on the yards, and asked of
those below what they had come for. Au-ke-le told his brothers to say
that they had not come to make war and that they had come on a voyage
of sight-seeing. His brothers would not say this; instead they cried
out to the birds, “Ours is a ship to make war.” The birds flew back;
they told their sister Na-maka that the ship had come to make war. Then
the Queen put on her war-skirt and went down to the shore.
Au-ke-le knew that all in the canoe would be destroyed. He took up his
calabash that had the Magic in it, and he threw it into the sea. As he
did this he saw the Queen standing there with her war-skirt on. She
took up her feathered standard and shook it in the air. Au-ke-le sprang
from the ship and swam after the floating calabash. Then the ship and
all who were on it disappeared: Na-maka the Queen made a sign, and they
were seen no more.
And now Au-ke-le was left on the land that his grandmother had told him
about—the land of Ka-la-ke’e-nui-a-Kane, where the stars rest on the
tops of the mountains. He brought the calabash that had his Magic in it
and the skirt of feathers that his mo-o grandmother had given him, and
he rested under a tree by the sea-shore.
The dog that was called Mo-e-la, the Day Sleeper, smelt his blood and
barked. And, hearing her dog bark, Na-maka the Queen came out of her
house and called to her four bird-brothers: “You must go and find out
what man of flesh and blood my dog is barking at.” But her four
brothers, being sleepy, said, “Send your two women-servants and let us
rest.” So the Queen sent her two women-servants to find out what the
dog was barking at. “And if it be a creature of flesh and blood, kill
him,” said the Queen.
Then the two servants went towards the shore where Au-ke-le was
resting. But his Magic told him what was coming and what he should do.
“When they come you must call the servants by their names, and they
will be so abashed at a stranger’s knowing them that they will not know
what to do.”
So when the Queen’s two women-servants came before him Au-ke-le called
out, “It is U-po-ho and it is Hua-pua-i-na-nea.” The two servants were
so abashed because their names were known to this stranger that they
stood there looking at each other.
Then Au-ke-le called them to him, and they came, and they sat near him.
He asked them to play the game that is played with black and white
stones. He moved the stones, and as he moved them he chanted, and his
chant was to let them know who he was.
“This is my turn; your turn now;
Now we pause; the blacks cannot win;
The whites have won:
Nothing can break the boy from Ku-ai-he-lani.”
The servants knew then that he was from Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country that
Supports the Heavens. They said to him, “We were sent to kill you, but
we are going back to tell the Queen that in no place could we find a
creature of flesh and blood.”
They returned, and they told the Queen that neither on the uplands nor
on the sea-shore, neither on the tops of the trees nor on the tops of
the cliffs, were they able to find a creature of flesh and blood. While
they were speaking the Queen’s dog came out and barked again. Her four
bird-brothers had rested, and the Queen sent them to search for the
creature of flesh and blood that the dog had barked at.
Then the Magic in his calabash spoke again to Au-ke-le. “Four birds are
coming towards you. You must greet them and you must call them by their
names. They will be so abashed at their names being known to a stranger
that they will not know what to do.”
As the four birds came towards him Au-ke-le called aloud: “This is
Ka-ne-mo-e, and I give greetings to him. This is Ka-ne-a-pua, and I
give greetings to him. This is Le-a-pua, and I give greetings to him.
And this is Ka-hau-mana.” The four bird-brothers were amazed to hear
their names spoken by a stranger, and they said to each other, “What
can we do with this man who knows our names, even?” And another said,
“He can take our lives from us.” And they spoke to each other again and
said, “We have one thing worthy to give to this man: let us give him
our sister, the Queen.”
So the four brothers came to Au-ke-le, and they offered him the Queen
to be his wife. Au-ke-le was pleased; he told them that he would go to
the Queen’s house.
The four bird-brothers went back to tell the Queen about the man who
was coming to her and to whom they had promised her. The Queen said,
“If he is such that he can overcome the dangers that are before him, I
will marry him, and he will be the ruler with me of the land of
Ka-la-ke’e-nui-a-Kane.”
When the brothers had gone his Magic spoke again to Au-ke-le, and it
said: “When you go to the Queen, don’t enter the house at once, for
that would mean your death. If they offer you food in a calabash, don’t
eat it, for that would mean your death. The dog that is called Mo-e-la
will be set upon you, and if you overcome him the four brothers will
attack you. Eat the melons on the vines outside the house, and they
will be meat and drink for you.”
After hearing the words that his Magic had said to him, Au-ke-le went
to the house of the Queen. He stood outside the door, and as he stood
there the Queen said to her women-servants, “Use your powers now and
destroy this creature of flesh and blood.” But when the servants saw
the man who knew their names, one changed herself into a rat and ran
into a hole, and the other changed herself into a lizard and ran up a
tree.
Then Mo-e-la the dog came towards him; he opened his mouth wide and he
showed all his teeth. But when he was touched by the skirt that
Au-ke-le had been given, the dog was turned into ashes. And then the
Queen, on seeing the death of her watchdog, bowed down her head and
wept.
She called upon her brothers to kill the stranger. But they were
abashed at his knowing their names, and they wanted to hide from him.
One turned himself into a rock and lay by the doorway, and another
turned himself into a log of wood and lay beside his brother, and the
third changed himself into a coral reef, and the fourth became a pool
of water.
Food was brought to Au-ke-le, but he would eat none of it. He went to
the vine, and he ate the melons that were growing there, and he found
that the melons gave food and drink to him. And when the Queen and her
brothers saw him eating the melons they said to each other: “How
wonderful this man is! He is eating the food that we eat. Who could
have told him where to find it?” After that he won the Queen, and she
became his wife.
But it was after his adventure with the bird Ha-lu-lu that Au-ke-le
knew that the Queen had come to love him and was inclined to be kind to
him. One day he was standing by the sea-shore, looking out to the place
where the canoe that had had his brothers on board was sunk, when a
great shadow came over where he was and covered the light of the sun.
He looked up, and he saw above him the outstretched wings of a great
bird. Immediately he picked up the calabash that had his Magic in it;
then the bird Ha-lu-lu seized him and flew off with him.
The bird flew to a cave that was in the face of a great high cliff. He
stowed Au-ke-le there. And Au-ke-le, searching the cave, found two men
who had been carried off by Ha-lu-lu, the great bird. “We are two that
are to be devoured,” said the men. “What does the bird do when she
comes to devour us?” said Au-ke-le. “She stretches her right wing into
the cave and draws out a man. She devours him. Then she stretches her
left wing into the cave and draws out another man.” “Is the cave deep?”
Au-ke-le asked. “It is deep,” said the men. “Go, then,” said Au-ke-le,
“and make a fire in the depth of the cave.”
The men did this. Then Au-ke-le opened the calabash that his mo-o
grandmother had given him, and he took out the axe that was in it. He
waited for the giant bird to stretch her wing within. When she did he
cut the wing off with his axe, and the two men took it and threw the
wing on the fire. The other wing reached in; Au-ke-le cut off the other
wing, too. Then the beak was stuck in, and Au-ke-le cut off head and
beak.
After Ha-lu-lu the great bird had been killed, Au-ke-le took the
feathers from her head and threw them over the cliff. The feathers flew
on until they came to where the Queen was. She saw them, and she knew
them for the head feathers of the bird Ha-lu-lu, and she cried when she
saw them.
When her brothers came to her she said, “Here are the head-feathers of
the bird Ha-lu-lu, and now there is no great bird to guard the Island.”
But her brothers said, “It is right that Ha-lu-lu should be killed, for
she devoured men.” They waited then to see what their sister would do
to Au-ke-le, who was in the cave. She brought the rainbow, the
short-ended rainbow that has only three colors, red, yellow, and green,
and she set it against the cliff. And by the bridge of the rainbow
Au-ke-le was able to get down from the cliff.
When his wife and her brothers saw him come back they welcomed Au-ke-le
with joy. The Queen gave him her kingdom and everything else that was
at her command. And she sent a message to her uncles, who were in the
sky, to tell them that she had given her husband all her
possessions—the things that were above and below, that were on the
uplands and on the lowlands, the drift iron, the iron that stands in
the ground, the whale’s tooth, the turtle-shell, the things that grow
on the land, and the cluster of stars. All these things were his now.
But with all these things in his possession Au-ke-le was not satisfied,
for he thought upon the canoe that was sunken and on his brothers who
were all drowned.
He dreamed of his brothers and of his young nephew; and, with the
thoughts that he had, he could not enjoy himself on the land that he
ruled over. And, seeing her husband so sad, sorrow for him entered the
heart of the Queen. He told her that he thought of the men who had come
with him and who were now dead. And when he spoke of what was in his
mind the Queen said: “If you have great strength and courage, your
brothers may come back to life again; but if your strength or your
courage fail, they will never be restored to life, and your own life,
perhaps, will be lost.” Then Au-ke-le said to the Queen, “What is it
that I must do to win them back to life?” And the Queen said: “You must
use all your strength and your courage to gain the Water of Everlasting
Life, the Water of Ka-ne. If you are able to gain it and bring it to
them, your brothers and your nephew will live again.” When Au-ke-le
heard this from the Queen he ceased to be sorrowful; he ate and he
drank, and he had gladness in his possessions. Then he said to the
Queen, “What way must I take to gain the Water of Everlasting Life, the
Water of Ka-ne?” His wife said: “I will show you the way: from the
place where we are standing you must go towards the rising sun, never
turning from the road that I set you on. And at the end of your journey
you will come to the place where you will find the Water of Everlasting
Life, the Water of Ka-ne.”
When Au-ke-le heard this he put on his skirt of feathers that his mo-o
grandmother had given him; he took up the calabash that had his Magic
in it; he kissed his wife farewell; and he took the path from his house
that went straight towards the rising sun.
After he had been on his way for a month the Queen came to the door of
her house, and she looked towards where he had gone. She saw him, and
he was still upon his way. At the end of another month she went out
again and looked towards where he had gone. He was still upon the path
that led to the rising sun. Another month passed, and she went and
looked towards where he had gone. No trace of her husband could she
see, and she knew that he must have gone off the path she had shown
him. She began to weep, and when her four brothers came before her she
said, “Your brother-in-law has fallen into space, and he is lost.”
She then sent her brothers to bring all things and creatures together
that they might all mourn for Au-ke-le. They went and they brought the
night and the day, the sun, the stars, the thunder, the rainbow, the
lightning, the waterspout, the mist, the fine rain. And the grandfather
of the Queen, Kau-kihi-ka-malama, who is the Man in the Moon, was sent
for, too.
But where indeed was Au-ke-le?
He had left the straight line towards the rising sun; he had fallen
into space, and now he was growing weaker and weaker as he fell. But he
still had the calabash that had his Magic in it. He held it under his
arm; and now he spoke and asked where they were. His Magic said to him:
“We have gone outside the line that was shown to us, and now I think
that we shall never get back. There is nothing in the sky to help us or
to show us the way; all that was in the sky has gone down to the
earth—the night and the day, the sun and the stars, the thunder, the
rainbow, the lightning, the waterspout, the mist, the fine rain. No, I
can see no thing and no creature that can help us.” Au-ke-le asked,
“Who is it that is still up there?” His Magic replied: “Go straight and
lay hold upon him, and we may be saved. That is Kau-kihi-ka-malama, the
Man in the Moon.”
The reason that Kau-kihi-ka-malama had not gone down to earth with the
others was that he had delayed to prepare food to bring down to the
earth, for he thought that there was no food there. He was just
starting off when Au-ke-le came up to him and held him tightly. “Whose
conceited child are you?” the Man in the Moon asked. “My back has never
been climbed, even by my own granddaughter, and now you come here and
climb over it. Whose conceited child are you?” “Yours,” said Au-ke-le.
“I will take you to earth, and my granddaughter Na-maka will tell me
who you are.” And so Kau-kihi-ka-malama brought Au-ke-le back to earth.
And when he reached the earth all the people there wept with joy to see
him. Then the sun, the day, the night, the lightning, the thunder, the
mist, the fine rain, the waterspout, and the Man in the Moon all
returned back to the heavens.
But nothing would do Au-ke-le but to set out again to find the Water of
Everlasting Life, the Water of Ka-ne. So he started off from the door
of his house, and he went in a straight line towards the rising sun.
And in six months from the time he started he stood by the edge of a
hole at the bottom of which was the Water of Everlasting Life, the
Water of Ka-ne.
He climbed over the shoulder of the guard, and the guard said to him:
“Eh, there! Whose conceited child are you? My back has never been
climbed over before, and now you come here and do it. Whose conceited
child are you?” “Your own,” said Au-ke-le. “My own by whom?” “My father
is Iku,” said Au-ke-le. “Then you are the grandson of Ka-po-ino and
Ka-mo’o-i-na-nea.” “I am.” “My greetings to you, my lord,” said the
guardian of the edge of the hole.
Au-ke-le had to go deep down into the hole to get the Water of
Everlasting Life, the Water of Ka-ne. The guardian of the edge of the
hole warned him that he must not strike the bamboo that was growing on
one side, because if he did the sound would reach the ears of one who
would cover up the water. Au-ke-le went down. He came to a second
guardian, and he made himself known to him, claiming relationship with
him through Ka-mo’o-i-na-nea, his mo-o grandmother. This guardian told
him to go on, but he warned him not to fall into the lama trees that
were growing on one side, for if he did the sound would reach the ears
of one who would cover up the Water of Everlasting Life, the Water of
Ka-ne.
He went on, and he came to the third guardian, and he made himself
known to him, claiming relationship with him through his mo-o
grandmother. This guardian told him to keep on his way, but he warned
him, above all things, not to fall into the loula palms, for if he did
the sound would reach one who would cover up the Water of Everlasting
Life, the Water of Ka-ne.
At last he came before the fourth guardian. “Who are you?” he was
asked. “The child of Iku.” “What has brought you here?” he was asked.
“To gain the Water of Everlasting Life, the Water of Ka-ne.” “You shall
get it. Go to your grand-aunt who is at the base of the cliff. She is
the Old Woman of the Forbidden Sea. She is blind. You will find her
roasting bananas. When she reaches out to take one to eat, you take it
and eat it. Do this until all the bananas have been taken from her.
When she says, ‘What mischievous fellow has come here?’ take up the
ashes and sprinkle them on her right side, and then climb into her
lap.”
Au-ke-le kept going and ever going until he came to where his
grand-aunt sat, roasting bananas—his grand-aunt, the Old Woman by the
Forbidden Sea. He took the bananas that she was about to eat; he
sprinkled her with ashes on her right side, and he climbed into her
lap. “Whose conceited child are you?” said the blind old woman. “Your
own,” said Au-ke-le. “My own through whom?” “Your own through Iku.”
When his grand-aunt heard him say this she asked him what he had come
for. He told her he had come for the Water of Everlasting Life, the
Water of Ka-ne.
Then the Old Woman by the Forbidden Sea made up a plan by which he
might get the water. Ho-a-lii, he who watched above the water, had
hands that were all black, and no hands but his were permitted to take
up the Water of Ka-ne. His grand-aunt made Au-ke-le’s hands black, and
she showed him where to go to come to the water.
Au-ke-le went there. He put down his blackened hands, and the guards
gave him a gourd of water. But this, as he had been told by the Old
Woman by the Forbidden Sea, was bitter water, and not the Water of
Everlasting Life. He threw the water out. He reached his hands down
again; and this time the Water of Ka-ne was put into his hands, the
Water of Everlasting Life.
He took the gourd into his hands, and he ran back. But he fell into
loula palms as he ran on, and the sound came to the ears of Ho-a-lii,
who was the guardian of the water. Ho-a-lii listened, but it was two
months before another sound came to him. That was when Au-ke-le got
entangled in the lama trees that grew on the side of the hole that he
had to travel up. Ho-a-lii kept awake and listened. But no sound came
to him for two months more. Then he heard the rustling of the bamboo
trees that Au-ke-le had fallen into. He came in pursuit. But now
Au-ke-le was out of the hole and was flying towards the earth. Ho-a-lii
followed; but when he asked the watcher how long it was since one had
passed that way, he was told that a year and six months had gone by
since one came up through the hole. Ho-a-lii could not catch up with
one who by this time had gone so far; and Au-ke-le, with the Water of
Everlasting Life, the Water of Ka-ne, came back to the earth.
He came to where his brothers and his nephew were drowned in the sea,
and he poured half of the Water of Ka-ne into the sea. Nothing came up
from the sea, and Au-ke-le sat there weeping. Then his wife came to
him, and she blamed him for pouring so much of the water into the sea.
Out of what was left she took water in her hands and poured it over the
sea. Then Au-ke-le looked. In a while there stood a canoe with men
climbing the masts, and folding the sails, and coiling the ropes. They
were his brothers. Au-ke-le greeted them, and his brothers knew him,
and they came to the land.
Then Au-ke-le gave his brothers all his possessions. But they were not
satisfied to live on that land with him, and after a while they sailed
away for other lands.
Then after long years Au-ke-le said to his wife: “My wife, we have
lived long together; I would not die in a foreign land, and I beg that
you will let me go so that I may see Ku-ai-he-lani, the country of my
parents.”
He went, with his wife’s four brothers. And they went by a course that
brought them there in two days and two nights. Upon their arrival
Au-ke-le looked over the land; but he saw no people, and the sound of
birds singing or of cocks crowing did not come to him, and then he saw
that the land of Ku-ai-he-lani was all grown over with weeds.
He came to the mouth of the cave where his mo-o grandmother used to be.
He shouted down to her, but no sound came back from her to him. He went
down. The coral of the floor of the sea had grown over her, and she was
not able to answer the call of her grandson Au-ke-le.
He broke away the pieces of coral that were around her. He saw the body
of his mo-o grandmother, and it was reduced to a thread, almost. He
called her name, “Ka-mo’o-i-na-nea.”
Ka-mo’o-i-na-nea said “Yes,” and she looked up and saw her grandson.
She greeted him and asked him what had brought him to her. “I came to
see you,” he said, “and to ask you where are Iku and the others.”
“Iku fought with Ma-ku-o-ae,” his grandmother told him. When she said
that, Au-ke-le knew that Death and his father had met.
PI-KO-I: THE BOY WHO WAS GOOD AT SHOOTING ARROWS.
“What is the cause of all that shouting down there?” said Pi-ko-i to
his father, Ala-la the Raven. “They are playing olohu,” said Ala-la,
his father. “And how is that game played?” said Pi-ko-i. “It is played
in this way,” said his father. “There are two in the game; they roll a
disk of stone, and the crowd shouts for the one who rolls it farthest.
That is the reason of the noise down there.” “I will go down and look
at the games they are playing,” said Pi-ko-i. “You cannot go,” said his
father, “until after to-day.”
Later on there was more shouting. “What are they shouting for now?”
said Pi-ko-i to Ala-la the Raven. “They are playing a game called pahee
now,” said Ala-la. “They slide a stick down a grassy slope, and when
the stick thrown by one slides farther than the stick thrown by another
the people all shout.” “I will go and watch this game,” said Pi-ko-i.
“You cannot go until after to-day,” said his father.
The next day there was shouting again at the same place. “What is this
fresh shouting for?” said Pi-ko-i to Ala-la, his father. “They are
playing a game now called ko-ie-ie.” “How is that game played?” said
Pi-ko-i. “It is played in this way,” said his father. “A board is
smoothed and thrown into the river at a place near the rapids. It has
to float steadily in one place without going down the rapids. The one
whose board floats the steadiest without being carried over the rapids
wins. That is the game of ko-ie-ie.” “May I go down to watch that
game?” said Pi-ko-i. “You may go down and join in the game,” said his
father.
Then Ala-la smoothed a board so that it would float steadily on the
water, and he gave it to his son Pi-ko-i. Pi-ko-i then went where the
crowd was; and this was the first time he had ever been with a crowd.
He had a sharp face, and he had little bones, and he had hair that was
like a rat’s hair. When the crowd saw him they cried out, “A rat, a
rat! What is a rat doing amongst us?” Pi-ko-i did not mind what they
said; he went to where they were casting their boards on the current,
and he cast on it the board that his father had smoothed for him.
It floated the steadiest of all the boards. It floated in one place
without being carried down the rapids. The crowd shouted for Pi-ko-i.
Then the other boys got jealous of him; they took his board, and they
flung it over the rapids. Pi-ko-i jumped after his board. He was
carried over the rapids and down to the sea. “A good riddance,” said
the boys to each other. “What business has a rat coming amongst us?”
Pi-ko-i was carried out to sea. For two days and two nights he floated
on the currents of the ocean, and then he was washed up on the beach of
another Island.
Now it happened that where he was washed up was near where his older
sisters, I-ol-e and O-pea-pea, lived with their husbands. A man came
down to the beach and found Pi-ko-i, and this man was Kaua, the good
servant of I-ol-e and O-pea-pea. “Where have you come from?” said Kaua
to Pi-ko-i when he found him on the beach, all wearied out, and weak
from hunger and the buffeting of the ocean. “From the sea,” said
Pi-ko-i. “Come with me,” said the good servant, and he brought the boy
to his sisters’ house.
The servant spoke to the sisters and he said, “I found him lying on the
sand, and all he says is that he has come from the sea.” “Where are you
from? Where were you born, and who are your parents?” said the sisters
to him. Pi-ko-i answered: “I am from Wai-lua on the Island of Kau-ai;
Ala-la is my father, and Kou-kou is my mother.”
When he told them this, the women of the house knew that the boy was
their brother. They sprang upon him, and they cried over him, and they
told him that they were his sisters.
And then their husbands came home, and a great feast was prepared for
Pi-ko-i. A pig was killed, yams were made ready, and pig and yams were
put into the underground oven to cook. But while the cooking was being
done, Pi-ko-i left the house and wandered off to where there was a
crowd and where games were being played.
The King and the Queen were at these games. It was a game of shooting
that was on; a man was shooting arrows at rats, and the King and the
Queen were making wagers on his shooting.
It was a Prince who was shooting arrows at the rats—Prince
Mai-ne-le—and all thought that his aim was most wonderful. The King was
winning all her property from the Queen, for he was laying wagers all
the time on Mai-ne-le’s shooting.
Pi-ko-i stood and watched the game for a while. After the Prince had
shot several arrows he said: “How simple all this is! Why, any one
could shoot as this man shoots.” When the Queen heard the stranger boy
say this, she said, “Could you shoot as well as the Prince?” “Yes,
ma’am,” said Pi-ko-i. “Then I will wager my property on your shooting,”
said the Queen.
The King kept on staking his property on the Prince’s shooting, while
the Queen now staked hers on Pi-ko-i’s. Whoever should strike ten rats
with one arrow would win, and whoever should strike less than ten would
lose the match. Prince Mai-ne-le shot first. His arrow went through ten
rats, and all the people shouted, “Mai-ne-le has won, Mai-ne-le has
won! The stranger boy cannot do better than that!” But Pi-ko-i only
said, “How left-handed that man must be! I thought that he was going to
shoot the rats through their whiskers!”
Prince Mai-ne-le heard what Pi-ko-i said, and he answered angrily: “You
are a deceiving boy. From the first day I began shooting rats until
this day, I have never seen a man who could shoot rats through their
whiskers.” “You will see one now,” said Pi-ko-i.
Then bets were made as to whether one could shoot through rats’
whiskers. These were new bets, and when they were all made, Pi-ko-i
made ready to shoot. But now the rats were all gone; not one was in
sight. Thereupon Pi-ko-i said a charm to bring the rats near:
“I, Pi-ko-i,
The offspring of Ala-la the Raven,
The offspring of Kou-kou:
Where are you, my brothers?
Where are you, O Rats?
There they are,
There they are!
The rats are in the pili grass:
They sleep, the rats are asleep:
Let them awaken;
Let them return!”
And when he said this charm the rats all came back. Pi-ko-i then let
his arrow fly. It struck ten rats, and the point of it held a bat. The
rats were all made fast by their whiskers.
When Mai-ne-le saw this he said: “It is a draw. The boy shot ten rats,
and I shot ten rats.” The people all agreed with Mai-ne-le—it was a
draw, they said. But Pi-ko-i would not have it so. “The bat must count
as a rat,” he said. “I have killed, not ten, but eleven rats.” The
crowd would not agree. Pi-ko-i kept saying, “It counts as a rat
according to the old words:
“‘The bat is in the stormless season—
He is your younger brother, O Rat:
Squeak to him.’”
And when he said that, every one had to agree that the bat counted as a
rat and that Pi-ko-i had killed eleven rats with his single arrow. And
so he won the match against Prince Mai-ne-le.
While the wagers were being handed over, Pi-ko-i slipped away. He went
back to his sisters’ house; he was there as the food was being taken
out of the oven. He sat down to the food; he would not let any one
speak to him while he ate. He ate nearly the whole oven-full. And when
he had finished that meal he was a changed boy: he was no longer
sharp-faced and small-boned; he still had hair like rat’s hair, but for
all that he was now a fine-looking youth.
Shortly after this the King and Queen wanted to have a canoe built in
which they could sail far out on the ocean. The King went with his
canoe-builders into the forest, so that they might mark for
cutting-down a large koa tree. They came to a great tree. But before
they could put the axe to it two birds flew up to the very top of the
tree and then cried out in a loud voice, “Say, Ke-awe, you cannot make
a canoe out of this tree; it is hollow.” And then they cried out, “A
worthless canoe, a hollow canoe, a canoe that will never sail the
ocean.”
When the King heard this he turned from the tree, and he and his
canoe-builders sought out another. They found another fine-looking
tree, but before they put an axe to it, the same two birds flew up to
the very top of it and cried out, “A worthless canoe, a hollow canoe, a
canoe that will never sail the ocean.” And to the top of every tree
that the King and his canoe-builders thought was a good-timbered tree,
the birds flew and made their unlucky cry, “A worthless canoe, a hollow
canoe, a canoe that will never sail the ocean.”
Day after day the King and his canoe-makers went into the forest, and
day after day the birds flew to the top of every tree that they would
cut down. At last the King saw that he could get no canoe-making tree
out of the forest until he had killed the birds that made the unlucky
cry.
So he sent for Prince Mai-ne-le to have him kill the birds while they
were crying on the tree-top. And he promised him, or any one else who
would kill the birds, his daughter in marriage and a part of the land
of his kingdom.
Now when Kaua, the good servant, heard of the King’s offer he made up
his mind that the boy whom he had found on the sand should win the
King’s daughter and a portion of the land of the Island. So he went to
where Pi-ko-i was, and he told him all that he had heard. “And if you
are able to shoot birds as you are able to shoot rats,” he said, “you
will become son-in-law to the King and one of the great men of the
Island. But Prince Mai-ne-le is going to let fly his arrow at the
birds, and perhaps you will not want to match yourself with him,” said
he.
When the servant said that, Pi-ko-i rose up from where he was sitting,
and he said: “I am going to shoot at the birds that make the unlucky
cry, and you must do this for me.” Thereupon he told Kaua that he
should make a large basket, and that he should tell every one that this
basket was for the safe-keeping of his idol. Into this basket he,
Pi-ko-i, would go and remain hidden there. And Kaua was to go with
Prince Mai-ne-le’s party, and he was to bring the basket with him,
being careful, though, to let no one find out that there was a man in
the basket. Kaua made the basket out of i-e vines, and Pi-ko-i went and
hid in it. Then Kaua took the great basket, and went and joined
Mai-ne-le’s party.
The canoes made swift passage, for the evening breeze behind them sent
them flying, and by the dawn of the next morning they were able to make
out the waterfalls on the steep cliffs of the land where the forest was
that the King walked in. They landed. Kaua was able to get men to carry
the basket that had, as all supposed, his idol in it. They entered the
forest, and they came to where the King and his canoe-makers were.
They were under a great koa tree. To mark it the men raised their axes.
As they did so the birds flew to the top of it and cried out their
unlucky cry: “Say, Ke-awe, you cannot make a canoe out of this tree. A
worthless canoe, a hollow canoe, a canoe that will never sail the
ocean!”
As soon as the cry was heard Prince Mai-ne-le shot at them. His arrow
did not go anywhere near the birds, so high was the tree-top, so far
above were they. Then the King’s men built a platform that was half the
height of the tree. From the platform Mai-ne-le shot at the birds
again, and again his arrow failed to reach them. Then Pi-ko-i from the
basket whispered to Kaua. “Ask Mai-ne-le and ask the King why the birds
still cry out and why they have not been hit. Is it because Mai-ne-le
is not really shooting at them?” Kaua said all this to the King. Prince
Mai-ne-le, when he heard what was said, replied, “Why do you not shoot
at the birds yourself?” And then he said: “There are the birds, and
here is the weapon. Now see if you can hit them.” “Well,” said Kaua, “I
will ask my idol.” He opened the basket then, and Pi-ko-i appeared. He
had changed so much since he had eaten the feast in his sisters’ house
that no one there knew him for the stranger boy who had beaten
Mai-ne-le in the shooting-match before.
And what he said made all of them amazed. He asked the King to have a
basin of water brought to the tree. It was brought. Pi-ko-i then stood
looking into the water. He saw the reflection of the birds that were on
the tree-top far, far above. He held his arms above his head; his arrow
was aimed at the birds whose reflection he saw in the water. He brought
the arrow into line with them; he let it fly. It struck both of them;
they fell; they came tumbling down. Into the basin of water they fell,
and the people, on seeing the great skill shown by Pi-ko-i, raised a
great shout.
Then the canoe-makers got to work, and after many days’ labor they
hewed down the great tree. The canoe was built for the King and the
Queen, and they went in it and sailed on the ocean. Pi-ko-i was with
them when they made the voyage. But before that, they had given him
their daughter in marriage, and together with the girl they had given
him a portion of the land of Hawaii. Out of the portion that was given
him Pi-ko-i gave land to Kaua, and the good servant became a rich man.
And as for Mai-ne-le, he was made so ashamed by his second defeat by
young Pi-ko-i that he went straight back to his own land and never
afterwards did he shoot an arrow.
PAKA: THE BOY WHO WAS REARED IN THE LAND THAT THE GODS HAVE SINCE
HIDDEN.
Paka was reared in Pali-uli, the land that the gods have since hidden
from men. That land he did not leave until he went forth to wed the
fair woman whom one of his foster-fathers had found for him—the
Princess Mako-lea.
But first I have to tell you about Pali-uli and the two men who found
it in the old days and brought the child Paka there.
These two men were the brothers of Paka’s mother; they were both named
Ki-i, and one was called Ki-i the Stayer and the other was called Ki-i
the Goer. One night Ki-i the Stayer had a dream: in that dream a spirit
told him: “You must go to Pali-uli and live there, you and your
brother; it is a land in which you can live without labor and without
discontent.” He dreamed this dream for three nights, and, each morning
after, he told his dream to Ki-i the Goer. But Ki-i the Goer paid no
attention to the dream that was told him. And then the dream came to
Ki-i the Goer, and the same words were said to him by the spirit in the
dream: “You must go to Pali-uli and live there, you and your brother,
Ki-i the Stayer; it is a land in which you can live without labor and
without discontent.”
Then Ki-i the Goer was all for going to the land of Pali-uli. Soon the
two brothers made preparations for going there. One night they went to
bed early; they woke up at the second crowing of the cock; then, in the
early dawn while it was still dark, they started off to seek Pali-uli,
the restful land.
Guided by a spirit, they found Pali-uli. (No one will ever find it
again; it has since been hidden from men by the gods.) It was a level
land; it was filled with all things that men might desire: the mountain
apple there grew to be as large as the bread-fruit; the sugar-cane grew
until it doubled over, and then it shot up again; the bananas fell
scattering on the ground, ripe always; the pigs grew until their tusks
were as long as a pig is with us; the chickens grew until their spurs
were as big as eggs; the dogs grew until their backs could be made into
seats and cushions; there were fish ponds there, and they were stocked
with all the fish of the ocean except whales and sharks. Such was
Pali-uli when Ki-i the Stayer and Ki-i the Goer came into it.
They lived there in great plenty and in much content for a while. Then
one day Ki-i the Goer said, “How strange it is that we have all these
things growing, and we have no one to leave them to!” Then Ki-i the
Stayer said: “We will take a young child and rear him up here, and let
him have some of the things that are growing in such plenty. Let us go
back to our sister’s now, and whatever young child she has, we will
take him back with us.”
So they went back to their sister’s; they found Paka, the child who was
just born, and they took him back with them. Paka had no form at all
when he was born; indeed, he was just like an egg. Ki-i the Goer
wrapped him in a feather cape as they went travelling back to Pali-uli.
After ten days they unwrapped the feather cape, and they saw that the
child was becoming formed. When they looked at him again they saw that
he had become most beautiful, a child with a straight back and an open
face. Then he grew up, and his beauty was such that it lighted Pali-uli
day and night.
And so he grew to be a youth. One day when they were looking on him,
Ki-i the Goer said to Ki-i the Stayer, “There is one thing wanting
now.” “And what is that?” asked Ki-i the Stayer. “A beautiful wife for
Paka.” Then Ki-i the Stayer said, “You must go search for a wife for
him.”
Ki-i the Goer consented, and he started off to search for a wife who
would be beautiful enough to wed with Paka. He found one girl who was
very much admired. But when he looked her over he saw that her eyes
bulged like the nuts of the ku-kui. He passed her by. And then in the
land of Kau he heard of another admired girl. But when he looked her
over he saw that her lips were deformed. Her, too, he passed by, and he
went on in his search. And then, in the beautiful land of Kona, he
found Mako-lea, a Princess who was as faultless as the full moon.
Ki-i the Goer went before the Princess and spoke to her of Paka. “Is he
as handsome as so-and-so?” said she to him. “So-and-so,” said he, “is
as the skin of Paka’s feet.” “Oh, bring him to me,” said the Princess.
“Bring me the youth you want to be my husband, and do not be slow.”
Then back to Pali-uli went Ki-i the Goer.
They knew that they would have to leave the beautiful land with the
youth whom they had brought up there; Ki-i the Goer and Ki-i the Stayer
knew that, and they knew that they could never come back to it. They
wailed because of their great love for that land and for everything
that was in it. They kissed and they wept over everything in their
beautiful house. Then they committed Pali-uli to the charge of the gods
who had shown that land to them. And never since that day has Pali-uli
been seen by men.
When they were ready for the journey to Kona, Ki-i the Goer stood up;
taking Paka by the hand, he left the house. But Ki-i the Stayer did not
move. His brother turned to him and said, “How strange of you to want
to remain when the youth whom we reared has to leave this place!” Upon
hearing his brother say this, Ki-i the Stayer stood up and left the
house. Then, with the youth whom they had reared, Ki-i the Goer and
Ki-i the Stayer left Pali-uli, the easeful land.
Now the King of Kau-ai had long wanted to steal Mako-lea. He sent his
servants Ke-au-miki and Ke-au-ka to carry her off and bring her to him.
On the very day that Paka was to reach Kona, Mako-lea and her
attendants went down to the beach to join in the surf-riding. Standing
on her surf-board the Princess was carried with wonderful speed across
the reef and back to the beach. She brought her surf-board out again.
But this time Ke-au-miki and Ke-au-ka overturned her surf-board and
took her and carried her off to Kau-ai.
When Paka came to Kona and found that Mako-lea had been taken away, he
took leave of Ki-i the Stayer and Ki-i the Goer. He asked Mako-lea’s
father for a small canoe, and a small canoe was given him. In it he
went over the sea until he came to the Island of Kau-ai.
When he reached the Island he broke his canoe into small pieces, and he
left the pieces on the shore. Then he went into the land. Now the King
who had taken Mako-lea was a great thrower of the spear, a great boxer,
and a great man for asking and answering riddles. Paka had heard all
about him, and he was prepared to meet him.
Down to the beach came the King with a great spear in his hand. “Who
shall have the first chance with the spear?” he cried out when he saw
Paka, “the stranger or the son of the soil?” “The son of the soil,”
answered Paka.
When that answer was made the King threw his spear in the full belief
that it would go through the stranger, for he had never missed his
throw. As the spear neared him Paka moved; he moved aside ever so
slightly. He made a quick motion of his elbow outward, and he allowed
the spear to enter between his arm and his body. He closed his arm on
the spear as the wind whistled by, and the point of the spear quivered
where he held it. The spear was held for a moment; then Paka let it
fall down.
The King was sure he had struck the stranger, and he uttered his
triumph in a chant.
“How could he stand against my spear?
It never misses what it is flung at!
Not the blade of grass,
Not the ant, not the flea!
How then could it miss the stranger, a man?”
But when he had uttered all this he saw Paka let the spear drop from
under his arm. The King looked on him with amazement, and he chanted
this:
“How did my spear miss the mark?
Was it pushed from its course by the southern storm?
Did a wind ward it off from him?”
He waited for the stranger to throw the spear back at him, but Paka did
not throw it. Then the King turned and went to his house.
When Paka came before it he heard shouts within. “What is going on?”
Paka asked. “It is for a game,” said a by-stander. “Our King is engaged
in a boxing-match; he is winning, for no one can beat him.” Paka then
went within, and he found the place filled with people. The King,
seeing him, said, “Will the stranger join in a boxing-match?” “I know
something of that game,” said Paka, “but not much. I am willing to try
a bout with the son of the soil.”
Thereupon they took up their positions. The King struck, and his blow
stunned Paka. Then Paka pulled himself together, and he struck. His
blow knocked the King down; he lay on the ground for a time long enough
to bake an oven of food. Then he rose up. He said, “That was a good
stroke; the stranger makes a real opponent.”
Because Paka had not been defeated in the boxing-bout, he was given a
house and food and clothes. Soon afterwards the King sent a crier
through the country telling the people that they must all come to the
King’s house on the fourth day after to hear the riddles that the King
proposed. Now this crier had never been given any food except what
dropped from the King’s eating place; he had never been given any
clothes, either, and he looked fearful in his naked, unwashed, and
wasted form. No one would go near the man, or speak to him, or give him
anything. Such was the King’s crier. He had a loud voice, however, and
the people all heard what he cried out.
He came along crying: “Every one is commanded to be in the King’s
presence on the fourth day from this to hear the riddles that the King
will propose. No man, woman, or child may stay at home except those who
are not able to walk.”
As the crier came along, Paka looked out and saw him, and he said to
those who were with him, “Call that man in and give him something to
eat.” Those who were with him said, “No, we cannot do that; he is a
disgusting-looking man; no one can bear to be near where he is.” But
Paka still said, “Call him to us.” The crier was called over; he came,
but he was ashamed to stand before the people who had called him.
Paka had the man wash himself. He gave him new clothes, and he bade him
sit down and eat. He ate until he was satisfied. Then said the King’s
crier: “I have travelled all around the Island, and no one has ever
given me food before. Now at last I have found out that pork and yams
and bananas are pleasant to the taste. How can I pay you for this?”
And then the King’s crier said: “I will pay you by telling you the
answers to the riddles that the King will propose. He will ask you to
join in the game, and if you join and are not able to answer the
riddles, he will have you slain. But if you are able to answer them, he
will have to give you whatever possession of his you ask for. This is
the first riddle that he will ask:
“‘Put it all around from top to bottom,
Leave, and leave a place with nothing around.’
The answer is a house, for the thatch goes around from top to bottom,
with a place not thatched for the doorway. And this is the second
riddle that he will ask:
“‘The men that stand up,
The men that lie down,
The men that are folded.’
The answer to that, too, is a house, for the timbers stand up, the
beams lie down, the thatch is folded. If you have an answer for these
two riddles, you may join in the game, and the King cannot have you
slain.”
The fourth day after this Paka went with the rest of the people to the
King’s house. The King saw him, and he called out, “Let the stranger be
seated here.” Paka went and sat near him. And then after a while the
King said, “Will the stranger join in the game?”
“I will,” Paka said, “but you must tell me the conditions of the game.”
“These are the conditions,” said the King. “I have two riddles to give
out: if you enter the game and cannot answer them correctly, you will
be slain; if you can answer them correctly, you are free to leave my
land and to take with you any possession of mine that you choose.” “I
will enter the game,” said Paka.
Then said the King: “This is the first riddle:
“‘Put it all around from top to bottom,
Leave, and leave a place with nothing around.’”
Paka waited. He waited, watching an oven that was being heated. If he
did not give the correct answer, he would be flung into that oven. When
the oven was all heated, he said:
“It is a house. A house is thatched all around, with a place for the
doorway left open.”
“Then answer my second riddle,” said the King, and he gave it out:
“The men that stand up,
The men that lie down,
The men that are folded.”
“The answer to that, too,” said Paka, “is a house. For the timbers of a
house stand up, the beams lie down, the thatch is folded.”
“That is the answer, but who has told you?” cried the King.
He was not able to have Paka killed, and he had to give him whatever
Paka chose to ask for. And Paka asked for the Princess Mako-lea who had
been stolen away from him. He asked for her, and he was brought into
another house. And there he beheld the Princess. And when he looked on
her he knew that when his foster-father had said that she was faultless
as the full moon he had spoken the truth. He took her back to Kona, to
the house of her father and her mother, and in Kona they were wed, Paka
and Mako-kea. And his two foster-fathers, Ki-i the Goer and Ki-i the
Stayer, married Mako-lea’s two attendants; and thereafter the two
elders lived so well that they almost came to forget Pali-uli, the
easeful land.
THE STORY OF HA-LE-MA-NO AND THE PRINCESS KAMA.
In Puna lived the Princess Kama, and she was so beautiful that two
Kings strove to win her—the King of Puna and the King of Hilo. They
sent presents to her mother and to her father and to herself. But Kama
never saw either of those Kings. She was sent to live in a house that
no one was permitted to enter except herself and her brother. “In a
while Kama will come to the height of her beauty,” her parents said,
“and then we will give her to be Queen to one of these Kings. But until
that time comes no one must speak to her.” And so, in a house that was
forbidden to every one else, Kama lived with only her young brother for
her companion.
Far away, on the Island of Oahu, there lived a youth whose name was
Ha-le-ma-no. Every night he had a dream in which he met a beautiful
maiden who talked to him and whose name in his dream he knew. But when
he wakened up he could not remember what name she had told him to call
her by, nor what words they had said to each other. He remembered only
her beautiful form and face, the dress and the wreaths she wore, and
the scent that was in her dress. The youth became so that he could
think of nothing else except this maiden, and he wasted away because of
this thought that put every other thought out of his mind. Then it came
about that he would eat no food, and at last his fasting and his
wasting thought brought him near his death.
But Ha-le-ma-no had a sister who had magical powers. Her name was
Lae-ni-hi. She was travelling with her other sisters when she saw
Ha-le-ma-no’s image in the sky, and she knew by that sign that her
brother was near his death. Her sisters wept for Ha-le-ma-no when they
saw that sign in the sky, but Lae-ni-hi uttered a magic spell, and
through that spell Ha-le-ma-no was brought back to life.
Then she went and she visited her brother, and when she was with him
she asked what it was that had brought him so near his death. “It is
because of a maiden whom I dream of continually,” he told her, “that I
was near my death, and that I may come near my death again.”
His sister asked him what the maiden was like, and he told her. “She is
tall and very beautiful, and she seems to be a Princess. She has a
wreath of hala on her head and a lei of lehua-blossoms around her neck.
Her dress is of scented tapa, and it is dyed red.” “It is in Puna,”
said his sister, “that the women wear the lehua lei, and have scented
tapa for their dresses.”
Then she asked, “How do your meetings come about?” “When I fall
asleep,” said Ha-le-ma-no, “the maiden comes to me. Then she tells me
her name. But when I waken up I do not know the name I called her by.”
He slept, and his wise sister watched over him. In his sleep he again
met the beautiful maiden. She heard him speak the dream-woman’s name.
It was Kama. Soon afterwards Ha-le-ma-no wakened from his sleep.
“She is Kama, and of her I have heard much,” said his sister. “She is
very beautiful. But no one is permitted to come into the house where
she lives. And in a while, when she has reached the height of her
beauty, she will be given in marriage to the King of Puna or the King
of Hilo.” “Unless I can take her out of that forbidden house and away
from these two Kings,” said Ha-le-ma-no, “I shall surely die.”
Then his sister promised him that she would strive to find some way of
bringing him and Kama together. He ate his food because she made that
promise, and he became well again. Then, that he might be able to
follow her travels, she told him of the signs she would show. “If it
rains here,” she said, “you will know that I have got as far as the
Island of Mo-lo-kai. If the lightning flashes, you will know that I
have reached the Island of Maui. If it thunders, I am at Kohala. And if
you see red water flowing, I have reached Puna, where your Princess
lives.”
Ha-le-ma-no’s sister started off. Soon it rained; soon the lightning
flashed; soon thunder was heard; soon red water flowed. Lae-ni-hi had
come to Puna.
When she came there she began to devise ways by which she could come to
the Princess in her forbidden house. She caused the wind to blow. It
aroused the sea from its repose, and the surf began to roll in on the
beach of Kai-mu. That was a place where the people used to go for
surf-riding. When they saw the surf coming in in great rollers they
began to shout. They got their surf-boards and prepared to ride in on
the rolling surf.
When Kama’s brother heard the shouting he came down on the beach. He
saw the people riding the surf, and he went back to ask his sister’s
permission to ride the surf like the others. She came down to the beach
with him. And when she saw the surf coming in in such fine rollers she
too became excited, and she longed to go riding it.
She allowed the first roller to come in until it reached the shore; she
allowed the second roller to come in; then the third. And when that
roller reached the shore she plunged in and swam out with her board to
the place where the rollers began to curve up. When she reached that
place she took the first roller that came along, and, standing on her
surf-board, she rode in on it. The people watching shouted in
admiration for her, so beautiful was her figure as she stood upon the
board that came racing in with the rolling surf.
She rode the surf three times, and she was becoming more and more
delighted with the sport, when the wind ceased to blow and the surf
went down. Kama was left in shallow water. She looked down, and she saw
a bright fish in the water. And her brother, who was looking towards
her, saw the fish at the same time. He called out to her, “O my sister,
take up and bring to me the bright fish that is in the shallow water.”
Now the fish was Lae-ni-hi, who had transformed herself. Kama put her
hands under her and took her up. She put the fish into a calabash of
water and gave her to her brother for a plaything. He carried the fish
with him, and in that way Lae-ni-hi came into the house that was
forbidden to all except the Princess and her brother.
In the middle of the night she changed back into a woman, and she stood
above where the Princess lay. Kama wakened up and saw the strange woman
near her. “Where are you from?” the Princess asked. “I am from near
here.” “There is no woman who is like you anywhere near. Besides, no
one belonging to this place would come into this house, for all know
that it is forbidden.” “I have come from beyond the sea.” “Yes, now you
are telling me the truth.”
Then Lae-ni-hi asked the Princess if she had ever met a youth in her
dream. The Princess would not answer when she asked this. “If you would
have me bring one to you, give me a wreath that you have worn, and a
dress,” said Ha-le-ma-no’s sister. Kama gave her a wreath that was
withered and one of her scented dresses.
Lae-ni-hi went back to her brother. She showed him the wreath and the
dress that the Princess had worn. Upon seeing these things Ha-le-ma-no
was sure that his sister had been with the dream-maiden, and he rose up
to go at once to where she was.
But his sister would not let him go without her. And before she would
go back to Puna she had toys and playthings made—toys and playthings
that would take the fancy of Kama’s young brother. She had wooden birds
made that would float on the waves; she had a toy canoe made and
painted red; in it there were men in red to paddle it; she had other
figures made that could stand upright; then she fixed up a colored and
high-flying kite.
With the toys and playthings in their canoe, Ha-le-ma-no and Lae-ni-hi
started off for Puna. And when they drew near the shore Ha-le-ma-no let
the kite rise up. As it went up in the air the people on the beach saw
it, and they shouted. The Princess’s brother heard the shouts, and he
came out to see what was happening.
When he saw the kite he ran down to the beach. He saw a canoe with two
persons in it, and one of them held the string of the kite. He called
out to them, “Oh, let me have the thing that flies!” Lae-ni-hi then
said to her brother, “Let the boy have it,” and he put the string of
the kite into the boy’s hand. Then the birds were put into the water,
and they floated on the waves. Then the toy canoe with its men in red
was let down, and it floated on the water. The boy cried out, “Oh, let
me have these things,” and Lae-ni-hi gave them to him.
And then she put along the side of the canoe the standing figures that
she had brought. The boy saw them, and them he wanted too. Then
Lae-ni-hi said to him, “Are you a favorite with your sister?” “I am,”
the boy said; “she will do anything I ask her to do.” “Call her so that
she comes near us, and I will give you these figures.” The boy then
called her. “Unless you come here, sister,” he said, “I cannot get
these playthings.”
Kama came near. Then Ha-le-ma-no saw that she had the very height of
the maiden whom he had seen in his dreams. “Are you a favorite with
your sister, and would she mind if you asked her to turn her back to
us?” Lae-ni-hi said. The boy asked his sister to turn her back, and
then Ha-le-ma-no saw how straight her back was. After this Lae-ni-hi
said, “Are you a favorite with your sister, and would she mind if you
asked her to show her face to us?” After that Kama stood facing the
canoe, and Ha-le-ma-no saw that this was indeed the maiden of his
dream.
Then they met, Ha-le-ma-no and Kama. The Princess knew him for the
youth she had seen in her dreams. She let him take her by the hands and
bring her into the canoe. When they were in the canoe Lae-ni-hi paddled
it off. The people of Puna and the people of Hilo came in chase of
them. But by the power that Lae-ni-hi had, the canoe was made to go so
swiftly that those who followed were left far behind.
After this the two Kings said to each other: “Yes, we have sent much of
what we owned to her and to her parents with the idea that one or the
other of us would get her for his wife. Now she has been carried off
from us. Let us make war upon those who have taken her, and punish them
for having carried her off.”
And so the two Kings made war upon Ha-le-ma-no’s people. Ha-le-ma-no
and Kama had to flee away. And after enduring much suffering and much
poverty they came to the Island of Maui. There they lived; but instead
of living in state and having plenty, they had to dig the ground and
live as a farmer and a farmer’s wife.
Near where they lived there was a beach, and people used to go down to
it for surf-riding. One day Kama went down to this beach. She took a
board and went surf-riding. And when she was racing in on the surf she
remembered how she had once lived as a Princess, and she remembered how
Ha-le-ma-no had come and had taken her away, and how she had nothing
now but a grass hut and the roots that she and her husband pulled out
of the ground. And then she was angry with Ha-le-ma-no, and she longed
to be back again in Puna.
When she finished surf-riding and came in on to the shore she saw that
there were red canoes there—the canoes of a King. And then she saw
Hua-a, the King of Puna. He came to her, and he took her by the hands.
She went with him, leaving her husband, who was working in his fields.
But in a while she was sorry for what she had done, and she left Hua-a.
And after that Kama went wandering through the Islands.
Now when Ha-le-ma-no knew that his wife had left him, he grew so ill
that again he was near his death. But again his sister saved him. Then,
when he was well, Ha-le-ma-no told his sister that he would learn to be
a fisherman, for he thought that if he were something else than a
farmer Kama would come back to him.
His sister told him to learn to be a singer and a chanter of verses;
she told him that, if he had that art, he would be most likely to win
his wife back to him. Ha-le-ma-no made up his mind to learn the art of
singing and of chanting verses.
When he was on his way to learn this art he passed by a grove at
Ke-a-kui. He went within the grove, and he saw the mai-le vine growing
on the ohia trees. Then he began to strip the vine from the trees and
make wreaths of it. He was sitting down making the wreaths when he saw
the top of the mountain Ha-le-a-ka-la, like a pointed cloud in the
evening, with other clouds drifting about it. And when he looked upon
that mountain he thought of the places where he and his wife had
travelled. And as he was thinking of her, his wife, who had been
wandering about that Island, came near where he was. She saw him and
she knew him; she came and she stood behind him. And then Ha-le-ma-no,
looking upon the mountain, was moved to chant these verses:
“I was once thought a good deal of, O my love!
My companion of the shady trees.
For we two once lived on the food from the long-speared
grass of the wilderness.
Alas, O my love!
My love from the land of the Kau-mu-ku wind,
As it comes gliding over the ocean,
As it covers the waves of Papa-wai,
For it was the canoe that brought us here.
Alas, O my love!
My love of the home where we were friendless,
Our only friend being our love for one another.
It is hooked, and it bites to the very inside of the bones.”
Kama was going to put out her hand to touch him, but, hearing him chant
this, she thought that he was in such sorrow that he would never
forgive her. She wept and she went away, leaving the place without
speaking to him.
After that Ha-le-ma-no went on his way; he learned the art of singing
and of chanting verses. Afterwards, when he was very famous, it
happened that he was invited to a place where there were games and
singing.
He came to that place; covered over with a mantle, he sat by himself,
and he watched those who came in. Many people came in, and amongst them
a woman who wanted to be a wife to Ha-le-ma-no—a woman of great riches.
But as Ha-le-ma-no looked towards this woman, he saw sitting there, in
all her beauty and her grace, his own wife Kama. They asked him to
chant to them. Then he remembered how he and she had lived together and
had wandered together in different places; and, remembering this, he
chanted:
“We once lived in Hilo, in our own home,
For we had suffered in the home that was not ours,
For I had but one friend, myself.
The streams of Hilo are innumerable,
The high cliff was the home where we lived.
Alas, my love of the lehua blossoms of Moku-pa-ne!
The lehua blossoms that were braided with the hala blossoms,
For our love for one another was all that we had.
The rain fell only at Le-le-wi,
As it came creeping over the hala trees at Po-mai-kai,
At the place where I was punished through love.
Alas, O my love!
My love from the leaping cliffs of Pi-i-kea;
From the waters of Wai-lu-ku where the people are carried under,
Which we had to go through to get to the many cliffs of Hilo,
Those solemn cliffs that are bare of people,
Peopled by you and me alone, my love,
You, my own love!”
And when she heard these verses Kama knew who the man was who chanted
them. She bowed her head, and she chanted:
“Alas, thou art my bosom companion, my love!
My companion of the cold watery home of Hilo.
I am from Hilo,
From the rain that pelts the leaves of the bread-fruit
of Pi-i-honua;
For we live at the bread-fruit trees of Malama.
Love is shown by the tears,
Love is the friend of my companion,
My companion of the thick forests of Pana-ewa,
Where you and I have trod,
Our only fellow-traveller our love.
Alas, O my companion, my love!
My love of the cold, watery home of Hilo,
The friendless home where you and I lived.”
And when she had chanted this, Kama looked towards Ha-le-ma-no, and she
saw that forgiveness was in his eyes. They stood up then, and they
joined each other. Then they went away together.
“You will surely see Hai-li,
Hai-li where the blossoming lehua trees
Are haunted by the birds,
The o-o of the forest,
Whose sweet notes can be heard at eventide.”
So they sang to each other as they went away together.
THE ARROW AND THE SWING.
Hi-ku lived on a peak of the mountain, and Ka-we-lu lived in the
lowlands. Ka-we-lu was a princess, but at the time when she was in the
lowlands she had no state nor greatness; she was alone except for some
women who attended her. Hi-ku was a boy; he had a wonderful arrow that
was named Pua-ne.
One day Hi-ku took his arrow and he went down towards the lowlands. He
met some boys who were casting their arrows, and he offered to cast his
against theirs. He cast his arrow; it went over the heads of a
bald-headed man and a sightless man; it went over the heads of a lame
man and a large-headed man; it went across the fields of many men, and
it fell at last before the door of the girl Ka-we-lu.
Her women attendants brought the arrow to her. Ka-we-lu took it and hid
it. Then Hi-ku came along. “Have any of you seen my arrow?” he said to
the women attendants. “We have not seen it,” they said. “The arrow fell
here,” said Hi-ku, “for I watched it fall.” “Would you know your arrow
from another arrow?” asked the Princess from her house. “Know it! Why,
my arrow would answer if I called it,” answered Hi-ku. “Call it, then,”
said the Princess. “Pua-ne, Pua-ne,” Hi-ku called. “Here,” said Pua-ne
the arrow. “I knew you had hidden my arrow,” said Hi-ku. “Come and find
it,” said the Princess.
He went into her house to search for the arrow, and the Princess closed
the door behind him. He found the arrow. He held the arrow in his hand,
and he did not go, for when he looked around he saw so many beautiful
things that he forgot what he had come for.
He saw beautiful wreaths of flowers and beautiful capes of feathers; he
saw mats of many beautiful colors, and he saw shells and beautiful
pieces of coral. And he saw one thing that was more beautiful than all
these. He saw Ka-we-lu the Princess. In the middle of her dwelling she
stood, and her beauty was so bright that it seemed as if many ku-kui
were blazing up with all their light. Hi-ku forgot his home on the
mountain peak. He looked on the Princess, and he loved her. She had
loved him when she saw him coming towards her house; but she loved him
more when she saw him standing within it, his magic arrow in his hand.
He stayed in her house for five days. Every day Ka-we-lu would go into
one of the houses outside and eat with her attendants. But neither on
the first day nor the second day, neither on the third day nor the
fourth day, nor yet on the fifth day, did she offer food to Hi-ku, nor
did she tell him where he might go to get it.
He was hungry on the second day, and he became hungrier and hungrier
and hungrier. He was angry on the third day, and he became angrier and
angrier. And why did the Princess not offer him any food? I do not
know. Some say that it was because her attendants made little of him,
saying that the food they had was all for people of high rank, and that
it might not be given to Hi-ku, whose rank, they said, was a low one.
Perhaps her attendants prevented her giving food to him, saying such
things about him.
On the fifth day, when Ka-we-lu was eating with her attendants in a
house outside, Hi-ku took up his arrow and went angrily out of the
house. He went towards the mountain. Then Ka-we-lu, coming out of the
house where her attendants were, saw him going. She ran up the side of
the mountain after him. But he went angrily on, and he never looked
backward towards the Princess or towards the lowlands that she lived
in.
She went swiftly after him, calling to him as the plover calls, flying
here and there. She called to him, for she deeply loved him, and she
looked upon him as her husband. But he, knowing that she was gaining on
him, made an incantation to hold her back. He called upon the mai-le
vines and the i-e vines; he called upon the ohia trees and the other
branching trees to close up the path against her. But still Ka-we-lu
went on, struggling against the tangle that grew across her path. Her
garments were torn, and her body became covered with tears and
scratches. Still she went on. But now Hi-ku was going farther and
farther from her. Then she sang to him aloud, so that he could not but
hear:
“My flowers are fallen from me,
And Hi-ku goes on and on:
The flowers that we twined for my wreath.
If Hi-ku would fling back to me
A flower, since all mine are gone!”
He did not throw back a flower, nor did he call out a word to her as
she followed him up the mountain ways. The vines and the branches held
her, and she was not able to get through them. Then she raised her
voice, and she sang to him again:
“Do you hear, my companion, my friend!
Ka-we-lu will live there below:
My flowers are lost to me now:
Down, down, far down, I will go.”
Hi-ku heard what she sang. But he did not look back or make any answer.
He kept on his way up the mountain-side. Ka-we-lu was left behind,
entangled in the vines and the branches. Afterwards he was lost to her
sight, and her voice could not reach him.
He went up to the peak of the mountain, and he entered his parents’
house. And still he was angry. But after a night his anger went from
him. And then he thought of the young Princess of Kona, with her deep
eyes and her youth that was like the gush of a spring. More and more
her image came before him, and he looked upon it with love.
Now one day, when he was again making his way up the mountain-side, a
song about himself and Ka-we-lu came into his mind. It was a song that
was for Lo-lu-pe, the god who brings together friends who have been
lost to each other.
“Hi-ku is climbing the mountain-ridge,
Climbing the mountain-ridge.
The branch hangs straggling down;
Its blossoms, flung off by Lo-lu-pe, lie on the ground.
Give me, too, a flower, O Lo-lu-pe,
That I may restore my wreath!”
And singing this song he went up to his parents’ house.
Strangers were in the house. “Who are they, and what have they come
for?” Hi-ku asked. “Ka-we-lu, the young Princess of Kona, is dead,” his
parents told him, “and these people have come for timbers to build a
house around her dead body.”
When Hi-ku heard this, he wept for his great loss. And then he left his
parents and went seeking the god Lo-lu-pe, for whom he had made a song
on his way up the mountain.
Now Lo-lu-pe was in the form of a kite, because he went through the air
searching for things that people needed and prayed to him to find for
them. And outside a wizard’s house Hi-ku saw the image of Lo-lu-pe, a
kite that was like a fish, and with tail and wings. Hi-ku went and said
his prayer to Lo-lu-pe, and then he let the kite go in the winds.
That night Lo-lu-pe came to him in his dream, and showed him where
Ka-we-lu was; she had gone down into the world that Mi-lu rules
over—the world of the dead that is below the ocean. And Lo-lu-pe, in
his dream, told him how he might come to her, and how he might bring
Ka-we-lu’s spirit back to the world of the living.
He was to take the morning-glory vines, and he was to make out of them
the longest ropes that had ever been made. And to each of the long
ropes he was to fix the cross-piece of a swing. Then he was to let two
swings go down into the ocean’s depths, and he was to lower himself by
one of them. And what he was to do after that was twice told to him by
Lo-lu-pe.
Hi-ku went where the morning-glory vines grew; he got the longest of
the vines and, with the friends who went with him, made the longest of
ropes. Then, with his friends, he went out over the ocean; he lowered
the two longest ropes that were ever made, each with the cross-piece of
a swing fixed to it. Down by one of the ropes Hi-ku went. And so he
came to the place of the spirits, to the place at the bottom of the sea
that Mi-lu rules over.
And when he came down to that place he began to swing himself on one of
the swings. The spirits all saw him, and they all wanted to swing. But
Hi-ku kept the swing to himself; he swung himself, and as he swung, he
sang:
“I have a swing, a swing,
And the rest of you children have none:
Whom will I let on my swing?
Not one of this crowd, not one.”
The spirit of Ka-we-lu was standing there beside Mi-lu, the King. Hi-ku
saw her amongst the crowd of spirits. But Ka-we-lu did not know Hi-ku.
Mi-lu came to where Hi-ku was swinging. He wanted to go on the swing.
Hi-ku gave him the seat. Then the spirits began to swing him, and Mi-lu
was so delighted with the swinging that he had all the spirits pull on
the ropes to swing him—the ropes that were on the cross-piece and that
were for pulling.
Then Hi-ku went to Ka-we-lu. “Here is our swing,” he said, and he
brought her where the second vine-rope was hanging. He put her on the
seat, and he began to swing her. And as he swung her he chanted as they
chant in the upper world, the world of the living, when one is being
swung:
“Wounded is Wai-mea by the piercing wind;
The bud of the purple ohai is drooping;
Jealous and grieved is the flower of the ko-aie;
Pained is the wood of Wai-ka;
O Love! Wai-ka loves me as a lover;
Like unto a lover is the flower of Koo-lau;
It is the flower in the woods of Ma-he-le.
The wood is a place for journeying,
The wild pili grass has its place in the forests,
Life is but a simple round at Ka-hua.
O Love! Love it was which came to me;
Whither has it vanished?
O Love! Farewell.”
He chanted this, thinking that Ka-we-lu would remember her days in the
upper world when she heard what was chanted at the swinging-games. But
Ka-we-lu did not remember.
Then Hi-ku went on the swing. “Come and swing with me,” he said, when
he got on the seat. “Sit upon my knees,” he said, “and I will cover
myself with my mantle.”
Ka-we-lu jumped up, and she sat upon Hi-ku’s knees. They began to swing
backward and forward, backward and forward, while Mi-lu, the King of
the Dead, was being swung by the spirits. Then Hi-ku pulled on the
morning-glory vine. This was a signal; his friends did as he had told
them to do; they began to pull up the swing. Up, up, came Hi-ku, and up
came Ka-we-lu, held in Hi-ku’s arms.
But Ka-we-lu shrank and shrank as she came up near the sunlight; she
shrank until she was smaller than a girl, smaller than a child; until
she was smaller than a bird, even. Hi-ku and she came to the surface of
the ocean. Then he, holding her, went back in his canoe and came to
where, the timbers built around it, her body was laid. He brought the
spirit to the body, the spirit that had shrunken, and he held the
spirit to the soles of the body’s feet. The spirit went in at the soles
of the feet; it passed up; it came to the breast; it came to the
throat. Having reached the throat, the spirit stayed in the body. Then
the body was taken up by Hi-ku; it was warmed, and afterwards Ka-we-lu
was as she had been before. Then these two, Ka-we-lu and Hi-ku, lived
long together in a place between the mountain and the lowlands, and
they wove many wreaths for each other, and they sang many songs to each
other, and they left offerings for Lo-lu-pe often—for Lo-lu-pe, who
brings to the people knowledge of where their lost things are.
THE DAUGHTER OF THE KING OF KU-AI-HE-LANI.
The Country that Supports the Heavens, Ku-ai-he-lani, was where Maki-i
lived and ruled as King. He came to one of our Islands, and there he
took a wife. After a while he had to go back to Ku-ai-he-lani, and
before he went he said this to the woman he had married: “I know that a
daughter will be born to us. I would have you name the girl
Lau-kia-manu. If, when you have brought her up, she has a desire to
come to live with me, let her make the journey to Ku-ai-he-lani. But
she must come in a red canoe with red sails and red cords, with red
bailing-cups, and with men in red to have charge of it. And she must be
accompanied by a large canoe and a small canoe, by big men and by
little men. And give her these; they will be tokens by which I shall
know her for my daughter—this necklace of whales’ teeth, this bracelet,
and this bright feather cloak.” Maki-i then gave the tokens to his
wife, and he departed for the land of Ku-ai-he-lani.
A child was born to the wife whom he had left behind, and she named the
child Lau-kia-manu. Meanwhile Maki-i in his own land had planted a
garden and had filled it with lovely flowers, and another garden and
had filled it with pleasant fruits, and had made a bathing pool; he
made the gardens and the pool forbidden places to every one except the
daughter who might come to him in Ku-ai-he-lani. And he had instructed
the guards about the tokens by which they would know Lau-kia-manu, his
daughter.
The girl grew up under her mother’s care. As she grew older she began
to ask about her father—who was he and where had he gone to? And once
when she asked about him, her mother said to her: “Go to the cliff
yonder; that is your father.” The child went to the cliff and asked:
“Are you my father?” The cliff denied it and said, “I am not your
father.” The child came back and craved of her mother, again, to tell
her who her father was. “Go to the bamboo bush yonder,” said her
mother; “that is your father.” The child went to the bamboo bush and
said, “Are you my father?” “I am not,” said the bamboo bush. “Maki-i is
your father.” “And where is he?” said the child. “He has gone back to
Ku-ai-he-lani.”
She went back and said to her mother, “Maki-i is my father, and he is
in the land of Ku-ai-he-lani, and you have hidden this from me.” Her
mother said: “I have hidden it because if you went to visit him
terrible things would befall you. For he told me that you should go to
him in a red canoe with red sails and red cords, with red bailing-cups,
and with men in red to have charge of it. And he said that you should
be accompanied by a large canoe and a small canoe, by big men and
little men. He gave me tokens for you to bring also, but there is no
use in giving you these, for you cannot go except in the canoes he
spoke of, and there is no way by which you can come by possessions that
denote such royal state.”
So her mother said, but Lau-kia-manu still had thoughts of going to
Ku-ai-he-lani, where her father was King. She grew to be a girl, and
then one day she said to her mother, “I have no way by which I can come
into possession of canoes that would denote my royal state, but for all
that I will make a journey to Ku-ai-he-lani; I will not remain here.”
Her mother said, “Go if you will, but terrible things will befall you.”
And then her mother said: “Go on and on until you come to where two old
women are roasting bananas by the wayside. They are your grandmother
and your grand-aunt. Reach down and take away the bananas they are
roasting. Let them search for them until they ask who has taken them.
Tell them then who you are. When they ask ‘What brings you this way?’
say, ‘I have come because I must have a roadway.’ When you say this to
them, your grandmother and your grand-aunt will give you a roadway to
Ku-ai-he-lani.”
Lau-kia-manu left her mother and went upon her way. She came where the
two old women were by the wayside, and she did as her mother had told
her. “Whose offspring are you?” asked the old women. “Your own,” said
Lau-kia-manu, and she told them the name of her mother. “What brings
you, lady, to us here?” asked the old women. And the girl answered, “I
have come to you because I want a roadway.”
Thereupon one of the old women said: “Here is a roadway; it is this
bamboo stalk. Climb to the top of it, and when it leans over it will
reach into Ku-ai-he-lani.” Lau-kia-manu went to the top of the bamboo
stalk and sat there. It began to shoot up. When it reached a great
height it leaned over; the end of it reached Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country
that Supports the Heavens.
Lau-kia-manu then went along until she came to a garden that was filled
with lovely flowers. She went into it. There grew the ilima and the
me-le ku-le and the mai-le vine. She gathered the vines and the
flowers, and she twined them into wreaths for herself. And she went
from that garden into another garden. There all kinds of pleasant
fruits were growing. She plucked and she ate of them. She saw beyond
that garden the clear, cool surface of a pool. She went there; she
undressed herself, and she bathed in that pool. And when she was in the
water there, a turtle came and rubbed her back.
She dressed, and she sat on the edge of the pool. And then the guards
who had been placed over the flower garden and the fruit garden and the
bathing pool came to where she was. “You are indeed a strange girl,”
they said to her, “for you have plucked the flowers and the fruit in
the gardens that are forbidden to all except the King’s daughter, and
you have bathed in the pool that is for her alone. You will certainly
die for doing these things,”
The guards went to Maki-i: they told him about the strange girl and
what she had done. The King ordered that they should tie her hands and
stand guard over her all night, and that when the dawn came they should
take her to the sea-shore and slay her there.
The guards took Lau-kia-manu; they tied her hands, they flung her into
a pig-pen, and they remained on watch over her all night. At midnight
an owl came and perched over where the girl lay. Then the owl called
out to her:
“Say, Lau-kia-manu,
Daughter of Maki-i!
Do you know what will befall you?
Die you will, die you must!”
To that the girl made answer:
“Wicked owl, wicked owl!
You are bad indeed,
Thus to reveal me:
Lau-kia-manu, Lau-kia-manu,
Daughter of Maki-i.”
The call of the owl and the answer of the girl came twice before the
guards heard them. Then they stood up and they listened. They heard the
call again, and they heard the answer of the girl within the pig-pen.
Then one of the guards said, “This must be Lau-kia-manu, the King’s own
daughter; we must tell him about it all.” But the other guard said:
“No. Lau-kia-manu, the King’s daughter, was to come in a red canoe,
having red sails, red cords, and red bailing-cups, with men in red in
charge, and with a large canoe, a small canoe, big men, and little men
accompanying it. This is a low-class girl; she has come with none of
these things.” The owl spoke again, and the girl made answer, and when
they heard what was said the guards agreed that they should go to the
King and tell him all that they had heard.
The King went back with the two guards. The owl was still above the
pig-pen, and the girl still within it. The owl called out:
“Say, Lau-kia-manu,
Daughter of Maki-i!
Do you know what will befall you?
Die you will, die you must!”
And to that the girl made answer:
“Wicked owl, wicked owl!
You are bad indeed,
Thus to reveal me:
Lau-kia-manu, Lau-kia-manu,
Daughter of Maki-i.”
When the King heard this he went into the pig-pen.
Now, after the guards had gone to inform the King of what they had
heard the owl flew down upon Lau-kia-manu; it clapped its wings over
the girl; it placed the necklace of whales’ teeth around her neck, it
placed the bracelet upon her arm, it put the cloak of bright feathers
around her. For this owl was really her grand-aunt, and it was to her
that Lau-kia-manu’s mother had given the tokens by which the girl was
to be recognized when she came into Maki-i’s kingdom.
When her father broke into the pig-pen he saw her standing there with
the necklace of whales’ teeth around her neck, with the bracelet upon
her wrist, and with the cloak of bright feathers around her. He took
her up and he wept over her; he gave her the garden of flowers and the
garden of fruits and the bathing pool with the clear cool water. Then,
in a while, he brought Ula to her.
Ula was a prince from Kahiki-ku, and he was as handsome as she was
lovely. What a sight it was to see them together, Lau-kia-manu and Ula,
the prince from Kahiki-ku! “What light is that in yonder house?” he had
said to her father on the night that he came to Ku-ai-he-lani, “That is
not a light,” said Maki-i; “it is the radiance of the woman who is
within.” He brought Ula into the house, and Ula and Lau-kia-manu met.
For fifty days they were together. Then Ula had to return to his own
land, to Kahiki-ku. “You cannot go there unless you take me with you,”
said Lau-kia-manu. “You cannot come with me,” said Ula. “If you came
you would meet with terrible suffering at the hands of the Queen of
Kahiki-ku.”
He went back to his own land. Lau-kia-manu remained in Ku-ai-he-lani,
but she was so overcome by her love for Ula that, every morning when
she saw the clouds in the sky drifting towards Kahiki-ku, she would
chant this poem:
“The sun is up, it is up:
My love is ever up before me:
Love is a burthen when one is in love,
And falling tears are its due.”
She would weep then. And when she found out that she could not put her
love away from her, either by night or by day, she went down to the
sea-shore and she wept there. Then, when her weeping was at an end, she
called out, “O turtle with the shiny back, O my grandmother of the sea,
come to me.”
The turtle with the shiny back appeared. She opened her shell at her
back. Lau-kia-manu went within the shell. Then the turtle went under
the water. She swam under the sea, and she swam on and on until she
came with Lau-kia-manu to the land of Kahiki-ku. The girl stepped on
the sea-shore, and the turtle dived into the ocean and disappeared.
Lau-kia-manu went along by the sea-shore. She came to where there was a
fish pond that belonged to the Queen of Kahiki-ku. She stayed beside
the fish pond while she uttered a charm, saying:
“Ye forty thousand gods,
Ye four hundred thousand gods,
Ye rows of gods,
Ye assemblies of gods,
Ye older brothers of the gods,
Ye four-fold gods,
Ye five-fold gods,
Take away from me my beauty, make it hidden:
Give me the form of a crone, bowed and blear-eyed.”
And when she had said that, her beauty was taken away from her, and she
appeared as an old woman, bent and wandering, with a stick in her hand,
gathering sea-eggs.
In the fish pond there were many kinds of silver fish. Lau-kia-manu
uttered a spell, and caused them all to disappear a minute after she
had seen them swimming about. Still she stayed near, dragging herself
here and there about the sea-shore. And while she was there, messengers
came to bring from the Queen’s pond silver fish for the Queen.
There was not a single fish in the pond. When the messengers saw this,
they accused the old woman who was near by of having taken the fish out
of the pond. She made no reply to them. Then nothing would do the
messengers but to take her before the Queen and charge her with having
stolen the silver fish out of her pond.
So they brought her before the Queen. “There is not a single fish in
your pond,” they said, “and we found this old woman near it, going up
and down.” The Queen said, “Nothing will happen to you, old woman, if
you will take as your name the name of my sickness.” The old woman said
that she would do that. Then the Queen named her Li-pe-wa-le, the name
of the Queen’s sickness; she let her stay in the house, and she gave
her food.
So Lau-kia-manu became known as Li-pe-wa-le. In the Queen’s house she
did menial tasks. And into the house came the Prince who was to wed the
Queen. He was Ula. Once when she was lying on her mat asleep, Ula came
and kissed Lau-kia-manu. She wakened up and cried out, “Who is kissing
me?” The Queen heard her voice and said, “What is it, Li-pe-wa-le?”
Lau-kia-manu made no answer. We can see by what Ula did that he knew
his sweetheart of Ku-ai-he-lani in spite of her being transformed into
an old woman.
One day the Queen went down to the sea-shore to bathe. She bade
Li-pe-wa-le stay within the house and decorate a dress that she was to
wear. Li-pe-wa-le did as she was ordered. But she worked so quickly on
the dress that she had it all done very soon, and she was able to
follow the Queen and her attendants down to the sea-shore. And on her
way she caused herself to be transformed back into her own shape, with
her own beauty. She passed the others by; she bathed near where the
Queen bathed, and the Queen and all her attendants were able to look
upon her. Then she dressed herself and hurried away.
They all hurried after her; the Queen was angry that one who was more
beautiful than she was should be in her country. Lau-kia-manu went more
quickly than they did, and when they came to the Queen’s house she had
already transformed herself, and the only one they saw there was
Li-pe-wa-le, the old and withered woman.
That night the Queen and her attendants and Ula the Prince went to
dance in a house that the Queen had built. She put on her beautiful
wreaths with the dress that Li-pe-wa-le had decorated for her. But she
ordered Li-pe-wa-le to stay within the house and decorate another
dress.
There she stayed, and the sounds of the music and the dancing came to
her. And then the girl went without. She looked over to the house where
the dance was going on, and she uttered this charm:
“Ye forty thousand gods,
Ye four hundred thousand gods,
Ye rows of gods,
Ye assemblies of gods,
Ye older brothers of the gods,
Ye gods that whisper,
Ye gods that watch by night,
Ye gods that show your gleaming eyes by night,
Come down, awake, make a move, stir yourselves!
There is the house, the house.”
And when she uttered this spell the Queen, who was dancing, fell down
on the ground. Fire burst out all around the house. And then
Lau-kia-manu, in the light of the fires, in the light of her own
beauty, stood in the doorway of the house. Ula the Prince saw her
there. “Come to me, oh, come to me, beautiful woman,” he said. But
Lau-kia-manu made answer: “I will not go to you now, nor ever again. In
your own country you did not cherish me, but you left me to sorrow and
affliction. Now I go back to Ku-ai-he-lani.” So she left the burning
house, and she went down to the sea-shore. She called upon the turtle
with the shiny back, her grandmother of the sea; and the turtle came
and opened the shell on her back, and Lau-kia-manu went within it. And
she journeyed through the ocean, under the waves, and came back again
to the land of Ku-ai-he-lani, and there ever afterwards she stayed.
THE FISH-HOOK OF PEARL.
There are fish-hooks and fish-hooks, but the most wonderful fish-hook
that any one ever heard of was the fish-hook owned by Ku-ula. It was a
fish-hook of pearl-shell; and every time Ku-ula went fishing he took a
canoe, not five fathoms or eight fathoms in length, but ten fathoms,
and when he fished with that hook (Ka-hu-oi was the name it had) the
canoe would be filled up with the catch.
And it was the finest of fish, the aku fish, that would rise to that
hook. He would let it down into the water, and the aku would throw
themselves into the canoe. Ku-ula was rich because of all the fine fish
he could catch with his pearl hook. It had been given to him by a bird
that was called Ka-manu-wai, and this bird would sit on the rail of the
canoe that Ku-ula went fishing in and eat some of the fish that Ku-ula
caught.
One day when Ku-ula went fishing outside of Mamala the King of that
place went fishing there too. The King caught few fish, and none of
them were fine ones. He looked, and he saw Ku-ula fishing, and he saw
that the aku fish were jumping in hundreds around the hook that the
fisherman let down. His attendants told him of the pearl hook that was
called Ka-hu-oi, and the King made up his mind to have this hook. He
sent for Ku-ula, and he made him give up the hook that the bird
Ka-manu-wai had given him.
After that Ku-ula caught no more aku fish; the bird Ka-manu-wai, not
getting the food it liked, flew away; its eyes were closed with hunger
where it roosted, and the place where that bird roosted is called
Kau-maka-pili, “Roosting with Closed Eyes,” to this day. And Ku-ula got
poorer and poorer, and he and his family got more and more hungry from
that day.
And so it came about that when his child Ai-ai was born they had no
food for him. They let him float down the stream, putting him in just
above the place where the bird Ka-manu-wai roosted. The child floated
down; a rock in the stream held him, and there little Ai-ai stayed in
the shallow water. That very day the King’s daughter, who was then a
young girl, was bathing in the stream with her attendants. She found
little Ai-ai, and she took him to the King’s house; there Ai-ai grew
up, and he was tended by the King’s daughter while he was a child.
When he grew up he was a strong and handsome youth. The King’s daughter
who had saved him came to love him; she would have him marry her, and
at last he and she got married.
It happened that one day after they were married his wife was sick, and
she asked Ai-ai to get her some fish. He took a rod, and he went
fishing along the shore. He caught a few fish, and he brought them home
to her. After a while she was sick again, and she had a longing for
fish again. And this time she wanted the aku, the fine fish from the
depth of the sea.
He told her then that he could not fish for aku unless he had a canoe
and a fish-hook of pearl. When she heard him say that, she remembered
that her father had a pearl fish-hook. So she went to the King, her
father. When she came before him, he said, “What is it you want, my
daughter?” She said, “A canoe for my husband, and a pearl fish-hook.”
He told her that her husband might take a canoe out of his canoe-shed,
and then he said to her, “I have a pearl fish-hook, and I will give it
to you for him.”
So he gave a pearl fish-hook to his daughter, and she hurried home with
it. Now Ai-ai, since he had grown up, had known his father and had
heard how the King had taken away the hook Ka-hu-oi from him. So when
he saw the pearl fish-hook in his wife’s hands he was overjoyed; he
took it from her, and he got a canoe in the King’s shed, and he went
out to fish in the sea.
A bird came down and watched the shining fish-hook that he held. It
rested on the rail of the canoe as he paddled out to sea. It watched
him lower the hook. Its eyes were half closed, but now it opened them
wide and looked down after the shining hook. This was the bird
Ka-manu-wai that had given the hook to his father, Ai-ai knew; now the
bird was going to eat plenty of the fine aku.
But no aku came on the hook, and no aku dashed up on the canoe on
seeing the shining thing in the water. The bird closed its eyes again.
It gave a croak and then flew away.
Ai-ai came back to his wife without any aku for her. Again she was
sick, and she begged Ai-ai again to get her the aku fish. “It may be,”
he said, “that the King has another pearl hook. Go to him once more and
ask him for one. Tell him that in the calabash in which he keeps the
fishing utensils that he used long ago there may be another pearl
fish-hook.”
So again she went before the King. “I have come for a pearl fish-hook
so that my husband may go out and catch me the aku fish that I long
for.” “I gave the pearl fish-hook that I had.” “In the calabash in
which you keep the fishing utensils that you used long ago there may be
another pearl fish-hook.”
The King ordered that this calabash be brought to him. He searched
amongst all the utensils that were in it, and at last he found the
pearl fish-hook that he had taken. He had left it there and had
forgotten it, for he had gone fishing only once after he had taken it
from Ku-ula.
And now he gave the hook Ka-hu-oi to his daughter. She hurried home,
and she put the pearl hook into the hands of her husband Ai-ai. He went
straight down to the beach and took out the canoe and went fishing in
the place where his father used to go. As he went the bird Ka-manu-wai
flew down and lighted on the rail of the canoe. It opened wide its eyes
to watch him let down the shining hook.
When he came to Mamala the aku began to jump to the hook. They threw
themselves up and into the canoe. They filled it up—even that
ten-fathom canoe was deep with them, and Ai-ai was hardly strong enough
to paddle it back. The bird Ka-manu-wai ate of the fish, and as it ate
the gleam came back into its plumage, and it was a wide-eyed,
strong-winged bird once more.
It took the pearl fish-hook and flew away with it. But every day it
would come back with the hook when Ai-ai took out his canoe. The bird
guarded the hook and would never let it go into a stranger’s hands
again. Sometimes it would bring Ka-hu-oi to Ku-ula, Ai-ai’s father; for
the old man took to going out in his canoe again, and he would fish for
aku outside of Mamala.
THE STORY OF KANA, THE YOUTH WHO COULD STRETCH HIMSELF UPWARDS.
Kana and Ni-he-u were brothers. Ni-he-u was such a great warrior that
he would fight against a whole army without thinking about the odds,
and he was able to carry such a war-club that, by resting one end of it
in his canoe and putting the other end against a cliff, he could walk
from the canoe on to the land. Certainly an extraordinary man was
Ni-he-u.
But if Ni-he-u was extraordinary, Kana was many times more
extraordinary. And what an extraordinary life Kana had! When he was
born he was in the form of a piece of rope—just a piece of rope! But
his grandmother (Uli was her name) took him to her house and reared
him. As he began to grow she had to have a special house built for him;
it had to be a very long house, a house that had to be lengthened out
as Kana kept growing. At last the house that Kana lived in stretched
from the mountains to the edge of the sea.
The name of the mother of Ni-he-u and Kana was Hina. She was carried
away from her husband, the boys’ father. And the way Hina was carried
away was very remarkable.
There was a Chief named Pe-pe’e who wanted to take Hina. He owned a
hill that was called Hau-pu. He lived on that hill; it was very
strange, but he was able to make that hill move about and do things for
him. I have heard that the hill was really a turtle, and that its real
name was Ka-honu-nunui ma-eleka. And if that was so, it is easy to see
how Pe-pe’e could get it to move about and do things for him.
One of the things that it did for him was to carry off Hina, the mother
of Ni-he-u and Kana. The hill came across the sea from Mo-lo-kai to
Hilo, carrying Pe-pe’e and his people upon it. Hina saw the hill when
it came over to Hilo. It looked so fresh and so green that she thought
it would be nice to walk upon it. So she went over and she climbed up
Hau-pu. And then, all at once, the hill moved from Hilo and went over
to the Island of Mo-lo-kai.
When Ni-he-u heard that his mother had been carried off he went to his
father and said: “Neither I nor you can get to her and bring her back.
Only Kana, my brother, can do that. You must go to him yourself, my
father, and ask him to do it. Don’t be afraid of him and run away if he
should turn and look at you. Just keep your eyes away from him, and
then you won’t be frightened.” After Ni-he-u had told him this, the
Chief, his father, went off to find Kana.
When he came to where his son was living, Kana looked at him, and the
sight of Kana was so terrible that his father turned around and would
have run away. But Kana called to him and said, “What have you come
for?” “I have come to tell you that the mother of you two has been
carried off by Pe-pe’e, the Chief of the Hill of Hau-pu, and she is now
in Mo-lo-kai, and unless you, Kana, go to bring her back, no one can
bring her back.”
When Kana heard this, he said, “Go and call all your people together
and order them to hew out a canoe by which we can get to Mo-lo-kai.”
The Chief then went back, and he sent out an order to his people: they
should gather together and hew out a great double canoe that would be
ten fathoms in length. His people did as they were ordered. Then they
thought that all was ready for the voyage to Mo-lo-kai.
But when the double canoe was brought down to where Kana was, he just
stretched out his hand and laid it upon it, and the canoe sank out of
sight. Other canoes of the same length were hewn out. But Kana did the
same thing to them; he laid his hand on one after another of them, and
one after another they all sank down into the sea. His father and the
men of the Island were left without a canoe in which to make the voyage
to Mo-lo-kai.
When the Chief told this to his son Ni-he-u, Ni-he-u said, “Then the
only thing to do is to go to Uli, my grandmother and Kana’s
grandmother, and ask her what we are to do about it.” The Chief went to
her. And when he came before Uli, she said, “What have you come for?”
“I have come for a canoe for Kana, in which he will be able to make the
voyage to Mo-lo-kai and fight Pe-pe’e, who lives on the hill Hau-pu,
and bring back Hina, my wife, to me.”
And when he had told her that, Uli said: “There is only one canoe that
Kana can travel in; it is in Pali-uli, and it is buried there. Go, get
all your people together and send them off to get that canoe.” And Uli
chanted:
“Go, get it,
Go, get it,
Go, get the canoe:
The canoe that is covered with the cloak of the old woman;
The canoe that jumps playfully in the calm;
The canoe that rises and eats the cords that bind it:
Go, get it,
Go, get it,
Go, get the canoe.”
She told the Chief where to dig and how to dig for the canoe that would
bring Kana to Mo-lo-kai.
So he took his men to Pali-uli, and there they all began to dig. The
men all thought that their labor would be in vain, for they never
expected that they would come by a canoe by digging for it. They worked
in the rain and under the thunder and lightning. And when they had dug
for the whole length of a day they came, first on the sticks at the bow
and stern of the canoe, and then the body of it. It was a great double
canoe. With much labor it was dragged down to the sea.
Then Ni-he-u and Kana made ready to go aboard it with their father and
his people and sail over to the Island of Mo-lo-kai. And that night
Pe-pe’e’s wizard—Moi was his name—had a dream; he went to Pe-pe’e about
it. He told the Chief what he had dreamt, and it was this:
“A long man, a short man,
A stunted youth, a god-man.
The eyes touched the heaven,
The earth was o’ershadowed:
Such was my dream.”
And when Pe-pe’e asked him what the dream meant, he said: “It means
that the borders of Hau-pu will be broken and that the hill will fall
to pieces in the sea. Therefore, depart from this place now while your
death is still at a distance.”
Pe-pe’e was very angry when his wizard told him this. “You are the one
that death is close to, you deceiving wizard. And if my hill is not
conquered in the coming fight, look out, for I shall kill you.”
Then Pe-pe’e made preparations against the people who were coming
against him. He sent the plover, Ko-lea, and the wandering tattler,
Uli-li, to fly around and look out for Kana and Ni-he-u. And he told
them to go also to his warrior, the one who had charge of. the ocean,
Ke-au-lei-na-kahi the Sword-fish, and command him to pierce the canoe
that was coming and slay Ni-he-u and Kana.
So Ko-lea the Plover, and Uli-li the Tattler, flew around until they
came to the place where Kana was lying. Said Ko-lea to Uli-li, “Let us
fly so high that we shall be out of reach of his long arms, and then
let us call out to him and tell him that he is going to be killed.” So
the plover and the wandering tattler, flying high, called out to Kana.
He lifted his hands to catch the birds; if he had not been lying down
he would have caught them, so high did his hands stretch up. The birds
went higher. But the wind that was made with the sweep of his arms sent
them far over the sea. There they hovered above Ke-au-lei-na-kahi the
Swordfish. “You are commanded to pierce the double canoe that is coming
over the ocean, and to kill Ni-he-u and Kana,” they said.
Kana and Ni-he-u boarded the canoe. Kana folded himself into many
folds, but for all his folding he took up the full length of the canoe.
When they were halfway across they were met by Ke-au-lei-na-kahi the
Sword-fish. He smote the canoe with the sword that was in his snout. He
thought he could pierce it and then slay Ni-he-u and Kana. But Ni-he-u
stood up, and with his great war-club he struck at the Sword-fish. He
killed Ke-au-lei-na-kahi there and then, and after that there was no
one to guard the seas before them.
So they came before where the hill Hau-pu was standing. Hau-pu rolled a
great rock towards the canoe. Kana was lying on the platform of the
canoe, and the people shouted that the rock was coming. “We shall be
killed, we shall all be killed,” they shouted. Then Kana stretched
himself out. He put out his hand, and he stopped the rock. He held the
rock with his right hand, and with his left hand he picked up a small
stone from the beach and placed it under the rock; that stopped it from
rolling any farther. It was stopped halfway down a steep cliff, and
there that rock is to be seen to this day.
The canoe was saved and the people were saved from destruction. Then
Ni-he-u started off. He wanted to go by himself to the top of Hau-pu
and rescue his mother all alone. He did not know what I have already
told you, that the hill was really a turtle; it was, and it had
flippers on its sides; when it closed these flippers the hill would
rise up; it could keep on rising until it touched the sky.
Around the house that was on the top of the hill there was a fence of
thick and wide leaves—they were thick enough and wide enough to keep
the wind from the Chief’s house. When Ni-he-u came up to this fence he
began to beat the leaves down with his great war-club. Then the wind
that was around the hill-top blew upon the house that was called
Ha-le-hu-ki. “What has caused the wind to blow on my house?” said
Pe-pe’e. “There is a boy outside with a club, and he has beaten down
your fence,” said his watchmen. “It is Ni-he-u, my brave son. He is
without fear,” said Hina.
Then Ni-he-u came in. He took hold of Hina and started to carry her off
and down the hill. And as they were going Hina said, very foolishly:
“What great strength you have, my brave son! And who would have known
that all that strength is in the strands of your hair?” Ko-lea and
Uli-li heard what she said. They flew after them; they flew down, and
they held Ni-he-u by the hair.
Then Ni-he-u had to put Hina down while he took up his club and fought
with the birds. They were drawing his strength away as they pulled out
of his head the strands of his hair. He struck at Ko-lea and Uli-li.
But while he was striking at them, Hina, frightened, ran back to the
Chief’s house.
When Ni-he-u came down to the canoe he was questioned by Kana. “Where
is our mother?” “I had taken her; we were on our way when I was
attacked by two birds. I had to lay her down; then she was frightened,
and she ran back, and I could not go back to fetch her again, or all my
strength would have been drawn from me by the birds.” “Now you stay and
watch in the canoe while I go to rescue our mother,” said Kana.
With that he stood up in the canoe and peeped over the hill Hau-pu.
Then Kana rose above the hill. He stretched himself until he was up in
the blue of the sky. The hill rose up too. Kana had to stretch himself
and stretch himself. And as he stretched himself he became thinner and
thinner. When he stood up in the blue of the sky his body was as thin
as the thread of a spider’s web.
Now all that Ni-he-u could see of his brother was his legs, and he saw
them grow thinner and thinner as the days passed and Kana had no food.
Ni-he-u knew that Kana was starving. He shouted up to him, “Lie over
towards Kona, towards the house of Uli, our grandmother, and she will
give you something to eat.”
It took three days for the words that Ni-he-u shouted to reach Kana. At
last he heard the words, and he stooped over the sea and over the
mountain He-le-a-ka-la. (It was then that he made the groove in the
mountain that is there to this day.) And so he reached to Kona, and he
put his head down at his grandmother’s door.
There he stayed until Uli rose up in the morning. She went outside, and
there she saw Kana, her grandson. She began to feed him. She fed him,
and she fed him, and she fed him. He got fat in his body, and then the
fatness of his body began to reach down into his legs. Ni-he-u saw the
fatness coming on the legs that were in the canoe where he watched and
waited.
Ni-he-u watched the legs getting fatter and fatter. But still he had to
wait, for his brother was doing nothing. Then he became angry, and he
made a cut in one of Kana’s legs.
It was three days before the numbness of this cut reached up to Kana’s
head. At last it came to him, and then he spoke to his grandmother
about it. “It is because your brother Ni-he-u is angry with you because
you have not remembered him or your mother, but stay here all the time
feeding yourself, and he has made a cut in your leg.” Then his
grandmother said, “The hill keeps towering up, but if you rise up above
it, and then stoop over and break off the flipper on the right side
(for the hill is really a turtle, as I have told you), and then stoop
over and break off the flipper on the left side, it will not be able to
rise up any more, and you will then be able to conquer it.”
When he heard that said, Kana arose once more. He extended himself up.
He towered over Hau-pu. Then he stooped over, and he reached down, and
he broke off the flipper that was on the right side. Again he stooped
over, and he broke off the flipper that was on the left side. And when
these two flippers were broken off the power went out of Hau-pu. It
rose no more. Then Kana stepped on the hill, and it broke to pieces.
The pieces fell into the sea. They were left there in the forms of
rocks and little hills. There they are to this day, and that is all
that is left of the hill that carried off Hina.
The Chief Pe-pe’e was conquered, for he had no power after his hill was
destroyed. Kana and Ni-he-u took back their mother in the canoe, and
she lived ever afterwards with her own husband in her own house. But
Kana did not live there. He went to stretch himself in the long house
that went from the mountains to the edge of the sea. And this ends the
story of Kana’s victory over the hill Hau-pu.
THE ME-NE-HU-NE.
Ka-u-ki-u-ki—that was the name of the Me-ne-hu-ne who boasted to the
rest of his folk that he could catch the Moon by holding on to her
legs; Ka-u-ki-u-ki, the Angry One.
The Me-ne-hu-ne folk worked only at night; and if one could catch and
hold on to the legs of the Moon, the night would not go so quickly, and
more work could be done by them. They were all very great workers. But
when the Angry One made his boast about catching the legs of the Moon,
the rest of the Me-ne-hu-ne made mock of him. That made Ka-u-ki-u-ki
more angry still. Straightway he went up to the top of the highest
hill. He sat down to rest himself after his climb; then, they say, the
Owl of Ka-ne came and sat on the stones and stared at him. Ka-u-ki-u-ki
might well have been frightened, for the big, round-eyed bird could
easily have flown away with him, or flown away with any of the
Me-ne-hu-ne folk. For they were all little men, and none of them was
higher than the legs of one of us—no, not even their Kings and Chiefs.
Little men, broad-shouldered and sturdy and very active—such were the
Me-ne-hu-ne in the old days, and such are the Me-ne-hu-ne to-day.
But Ka-u-ki-u-ki was brave: the Me-ne-hu-ne stared back at the Owl, and
the Owl of Ka-ne stared back at the little man, and at last the bird
flew away. Then it was too late for him to try to lay hold on the legs
of the Moon that night.
That was a long time ago, when the Me-ne-hu-ne were very many in our
land. They lived then in the Valley of Lani-hula. There they planted
taro in plants that still grow there—plants that they brought back with
them from Kahiki-mo-e after they had been there. It was they who
planted the bread-fruit tree first in that valley.
Our fathers say that when the men-folk of the Me-ne-hu-ne stood
together in those days they could form two rows reaching all the way
from Maka-weli to Wai-lua. And with their women and children there were
so many of them that the only fish of which each of the Me-ne-hu-ne
could have one was the shrimp, the littlest and the most plentiful fish
in our waters.
For the rest of their food they had hau-pia, a pudding made of
arrow-root sweetened with the milk of coco-nut; they had squash and
they had sweet potato pudding. They ate fern fronds and the cooked
young leaves of the taro. They had carved wooden dishes for their food.
For their games they had spinning-tops which they made out of ku-kui
nuts, and they played at casting the arrow, a game which they called
Kea-pua. They had boxing and wrestling, too, and they had tug-of-war:
when one team was about to be beaten all the others jumped in and
helped them. They had sled races; they would race their sleds down the
steep sides of hills; if the course were not slippery already, they
would cover it with rushes so that the sleds could go more easily and
more swiftly.
But their great sport was to jump off the cliffs into the sea. They
would throw a stone off the cliff and dive after it and touch the
bottom as it touched the bottom. Once, when some of them were bathing,
a shark nearly caught one of the Me-ne-hu-ne. A-a-ka was his name. Then
they all swam ashore, and they made plans for punishing the shark that
had treated them so. Their wise men told them what to do. They were to
gather the morning-glory vine and make a great basket with it. Then
they were to fill the basket with bait and lower it into the sea.
Always the Me-ne-hu-ne worked together; they worked together very
heartily when they went to punish the shark.
They made the basket; they filled it with bait, and they lowered it
into the sea. The shark got into the basket, and the Me-ne-hu-ne caught
him. They pulled him within the reef, and they left him there in the
shallow water until the birds came and ate him up.
One of them caught a large fish there. The fish tried to escape, but
the little man held bravely to him. The fish bit him and lashed him
with its tail and drew blood from the Me-ne-hu-ne. The place where his
blood poured out is called Ka-a-le-le to this day—for that was the name
of the Me-ne-hu-ne who struggled with the fish.
Once they hollowed out a great stone and they gave it to their head
fisherman for a house. He would sit in his hollow stone all day and
fish for his people.
No cliff was too steep for them to climb; indeed, it was they who
planted the wild taro on the cliffs; they planted it in the swamps too,
and on cliff and in swamp it grows wild to this day. When they were on
the march they would go in divisions. The work of the first division
would be to clear the road of logs. The work of the second division
would be to lower the hills. The work of the third division would be to
sweep the path. Another division had to carry the sleds and the
sleeping mats for the King. One division had charge of the food, and
another division had charge of the planting of the crop. One division
was composed of wizards and soothsayers and astrologers, and another
division was made up of story-tellers, fun-makers, and musicians who
made entertainment for the King. Some played on the nose-flute, and
others blew trumpets that were made by ripping a ti-leaf away from the
middle ridge and rolling over the torn piece. Through this they blew,
varying the sound by fingering. They played stringed instruments that
they held in their mouths, and they twanged the strings with their
fingers. Others beat on drums that were hollow logs with shark-skin
drawn across them.
It would have been wonderful to look on the Me-ne-hu-ne when they were
on the march. That would be on the nights of the full moon. Then they
would all come together, and their King would speak to them.
And that reminds me of Ka-u-ki-u-ki, the Angry One. Perhaps he wanted
to hold the legs of the Moon so that they might be able to listen a
long time to their King, or march far in a night. I told you that he
kept staring at the Owl of Ka-ne until the bird flew away in the night.
But then it was too late to catch hold of the legs of the Moon. The
next night he tried to do it. But although he stood on the top of the
highest hill, and although he reached up to his fullest height, he
could not lay hold on the legs of the Moon. And because he boasted of
doing a thing that he could not do, the rest of the Me-ne-hu-ne
punished him; they turned him into a stone. And a stone the Angry One
is to this day—a stone on the top of the hill from which he tried to
reach up and lay hold upon the legs of the Moon.
Perhaps it was on the very night which Ka-u-ki-u-ki tried to lengthen
that their King told the Me-ne-hu-ne that they were to leave these
Islands. Some of the Me-ne-hu-ne had married Hawaiian women, and
children that were half Me-ne-hu-ne and half Hawaiian were born. The
King of the Me-ne-hu-ne folk did not like this: he wanted his people to
remain pure Me-ne-hu-ne. So on a bright moonlit night he had them all
come together, men, women, and children, and he spoke to them. “All of
you,” he said, “who have married wives from amongst the Hawaiian people
must leave them, and all of the Me-ne-hu-ne race must go away from
these Islands. The food that we planted in the valley is ripe; that
food we will leave for the wives and children that we do not take with
us—the Hawaiian women and the half-Hawaiian children.”
When their King said this, no word was spoken for a long time from the
ranks of the Me-ne-hu-ne. Then one whose name was Mo-hi-ki-a spoke up
and said: “Must all of us go, O King, and may none of us stay with the
Hawaiian wives that we have married? I have married an Hawaiian woman,
and I have a son who is now grown to manhood. May he not go with you
while I remain with my wife? He is stronger than I am. I have taught
him all the skill that I possessed in the making of canoes. He can use
the adze and make a canoe out of a tree trunk more quickly than any
other of the Me-ne-hu-ne. And none of the Me-ne-hu-ne is so swift in
the race as he is. Take my son in my place, and if it ever happens that
the Me-ne-hu-ne need me, my son can run quickly for me and bring me
back.”
The King would not have Mo-hi-ki-a stay behind. “We start on our
journey to-morrow night,” he said. “All the Me-ne-hu-ne will leave the
Islands, and the crop that is now grown will be left for the women and
children.”
And so the Me-ne-hu-ne in their great force left our Islands, and where
they went there is none of us who know. Perhaps they went back to
Kahiki-mo-e, for in Kahiki-mo-e they had been for a time before they
came back to Hawaii. But not all of the Me-ne-hu-ne left the Islands.
Some stole away from their divisions and hid in hollow logs, and their
descendants we have with us to this day. There are still many
Me-ne-hu-ne away up in the mountains, living in caves and in hollow
logs.
But the great force of them left the Islands then. Before they went
they made a monument. Upon the top of the highest hill they built it,
carrying up the stones the night after the King had commanded them to
leave. The monument was for the King and the Chiefs of the
Me-ne-hu-ne—the monument of stones that we see. And for the Me-ne-hu-ne
of common birth they made another monument. This they did by hollowing
out a great cave in the mountain. The monument of stones on the top of
the mountain and the cave in the side of the mountain you can see to
this day.
On the next moonlit night the Me-ne-hu-ne in their thousands looked and
saw the monuments they had raised. They were ready for the march as
they looked, men and women, half-grown men and half-grown women, and
little children. They looked and they saw the monument that they had
raised on the mountain. Thereupon all the little men raised such a
shout that the fish in the pond of No-mi-lu, at the other side of the
Island, jumped in fright, and the moi, the wary fish, left the beaches.
And then, with trumpets sounding, flutes playing, and drums beating,
the Me-ne-hu-ne started off.
O my younger brothers, I wish there were some amongst us, the Hawaiians
of to-day, who knew the Me-ne-hu-ne of the mountains and who could go
to them. All the work that it takes us so long to do, they could do in
a night. Here we go every day to cut sandalwood for our King. We go
away from our homes and our villages, leaving our crops unplanted and
untended. We are up in the mountains by the first light of the morning,
working, working with our axes to cut the sandalwood. And we go back at
the fall of night carrying the loads of sandalwood upon our shoulders
the whole way down the mountain-side. Ah, if there were any amongst us
who knew the Me-ne-hu-ne or who knew how to come to them! In one night
the Me-ne-hu-ne would cut all the sandalwood for us! And the night
after they would carry it down on their shoulders to the beach, where
it would be put on the ships that would take it away to the land of the
Pa-ke. But only those who are descendants of the Me-ne-hu-ne can come
to them.
A long time ago a King ruled in Kau-ai whose name was Ola. His people
were poor, for the river ran into the stony places and left their
fields without water. “How can I bring water to my people?” said Ola
the King to Pi, his wizard. “I will tell you how you can do it,” Pi
said. And then he told the King what to do so as to get the help of the
Me-ne-hu-ne.
Pi, the wise man, went into the mountains. He was known to the
Me-ne-hu-ne who had remained in the land, and he went before their
Chief, and he asked him to have his people make a water-course for
Ola’s people: they would have to dam the river with great stones and
then make a trench that would carry the water down to the people’s
fields—a trench that would have stones fitted into its bed and fitted
into its sides.
All the work that takes us days to do can be done by the Me-ne-hu-ne in
the space of a night. And what they do not finish in a night is left
unfinished. “Ho po hookahi, a ao ua pau,” “In one night and it is
finished,” say the Me-ne-hu-ne.
Well, in one night all the stones for the dam and the water-course were
made ready: one division went and gathered them, and another cut and
shaped them. The stones were all left together, and the Me-ne-hu-ne
called them “the Pack of Pi.”
Now King Ola had been told what he was to have done on the night that
followed. There was to be no sound and there was to be no stir amongst
his people. The dogs were to be muzzled so that they could not bark,
and the cocks and the hens were to be put into calabashes so that there
should be no crowing from them. Also a feast was to be ready for the
Me-ne-hu-ne.
Down from the mountain in the night came the troops of the Me-ne-hu-ne,
each carrying a stone in his hand. Their trampling and the hum of their
voices were heard by Pi as he stayed by the river; they were heard
while they were still a long way off. They came down, and they made a
trench with their digging tools of wood. Then they began to lay the
stones at the bottom and along the sides of the trench; each stone
fitted perfectly into its place. While one division was doing this the
other division was building the dam across the river. The dam was
built, the water was turned into the course, and Pi, standing there in
the moonlight, saw the water come over the stones that the Me-ne-hu-ne
had laid down.
Pi, and no one else, saw the Me-ne-hu-ne that night: half the size of
our men they were, but broad across the chest and very strong. Pi
admired the way they all worked together; they never got into each
other’s way, and they never waited for some one else to do something or
to help them out. They finished their work just at daybreak; and then
Pi gave them their feast. He gave a shrimp to each; they were well
satisfied, and while it was still dark they departed. They crossed the
water-course that was now bringing water down to the people’s taro
patches.
And as they went the hum of their voices was so loud that it was heard
in the distant island of Oahu. “Wawa ka Menehune i Puukapele, ma Kauai,
puoho ka manu o ka loko o Kawainui ma Koolaupoko, Oahu,” our people
said afterwards. “The hum of the voices of the Me-ne-hu-ne at
Pu-u-ka-pe-le, Kau-ai, startled the birds of the pond of Ka-wai-nui, at
Ko’o-lau-po-ko, Oahu.”
Look now! The others from our village are going down the mountain-side,
with the loads of sandalwood upon their backs. It is time we put our
loads upon our shoulders and went likewise. As we go I will tell you
the only other story I know about the Me-ne-hu-ne.
There was once a boy of your age, O my younger brother, and his name
was Laka. As he grew up he was petted very much by his father and his
mother. And while he was still a young boy his father took a canoe and
went across the sea to get a toy for him. Never afterwards did Laka see
his father.
He grew up, and he would often ask about his father. His mother could
tell him nothing except that his father had gone across the sea in a
canoe and that it was told afterwards that he had been killed in a cave
by a bad man. The more he grew up the more he asked about his father.
He told his mother he would go across the sea in search of him. But the
boy could not go until he had a canoe. “How am I to get a canoe?” he
said to his mother one day.
“You must go to your grandmother,” said she, “and she will tell you
what to do to get a canoe.”
So to his grandmother Laka went. He lived in her house for a while, and
then he asked her how he might get a canoe.
“Go to the mountains and look for a tree that has leaves shaped like
the new moon,” said his grandmother. “Take your axe with you. When you
find such a tree, cut it down, for it is the tree to make a canoe out
of.”
So Laka went to the mountains. He brought his axe with him. All day he
searched in the woods, and at last he found a tree that had leaves
shaped like the new moon. He commenced to cut through its trunk with
his little axe of stone. At nightfall the trunk was cut through, and
the tree fell down on the ground.
Then, well content with his day’s work, Laka went back to his
grandmother’s. The next day he would cut off the branches and drag the
trunk down to the beach and begin to make his canoe. He went back to
the mountains. He searched and searched through all the woods, but he
could find no trace of the tree that he had cut down with so much
labor.
He went to the mountains again the day after. He found another tree
growing with leaves shaped like the new moon. With his little stone axe
he cut through the trunk, and the tree fell down. Then he went back to
his grandmother’s, thinking that he would go the next day and cut off
the branches and bring the trunk down to the beach.
But the next day when he went to the mountains there was no trace of
the tree that he had cut down with so much labor. He searched for it
all day, but could not find it. The next day he had to begin his labor
all over again: he had to search for a tree that had leaves like the
new moon, he had to cut through the trunk and let it lie on the ground.
After he had cut down the third tree he spoke to his grandmother about
the trees that he had cut and had lost sight of. His wise grandmother
told him that, if the third tree disappeared, he was to dig a trench
beside where the next tree would fall. And when that tree came down he
was to hide in the trench beside it and watch what would happen.
When Laka went up to the mountain the next day he found that the tree
he had cut was lost to his sight like the others. He found another tree
with leaves shaped like the new moon. He began to cut this one down.
Near where it would fall he dug a trench.
It was very late in the evening when he cut through this tree. The
trunk fell, and it covered the trench he had made. Then Laka went under
and hid himself. He waited while the night came on.
Then, while he was waiting, he heard the hum of voices, and he knew
that a band of people were drawing near. They were singing as they came
on. Laka heard what they sang.
“O the four thousand gods,
O the forty thousand gods,
O the four hundred thousand gods,
O the file of gods,
O the assembly of gods!
O gods of these woods,
Of the mountain, the knoll,
Of the dam of the water-course, O descend!”
Then there was more noise, and Laka, looking up from the trench, saw
that the clearing around him was all filled with a crowd of little men.
They came where the tree lay, and they tried to move it. Then Laka
jumped out of the trench, and he laid hands upon one of the little
people. He threatened to kill him for having moved away the trees he
had cut.
As he jumped up all the little people disappeared. Laka was left with
the one he held.
“Do not kill me,” said the little man. “I am of the Me-ne-hu-ne, and we
intend no harm to you. I will say this to you: if you kill me, there
will be no one to make the canoe for you, no one to drag it down to the
beach, making it ready for you to sail in. If you do not kill me, my
friends will make the canoe for you. And if you build a shed for it, we
will bring the canoe finished to you and place it in the shed.”
Then Laka said he would gladly spare the little man if he and his
friends would make the canoe for him and bring it down to the shed that
he would make. He let the little man go then. The next day he built a
shed for the canoe.
When he told his grandmother about the crowd of little men he had seen
and about the little man he had caught, she told him that they were the
Me-ne-hu-ne, who lived in hollow logs and in caves in the mountains. No
one knew how many of them there were.
He went back, and he found that where the trunk of the tree had lain
there was now a canoe perfectly finished; all was there that should be
there, even to the light, well-shaped paddle, and all had been finished
in the night. He went back, and that night he waited beside the shed
which he had built out on the beach. At the dead of the night he heard
the hum of voices. That was when the canoe was being lifted up. Then he
heard a second hum of voices. That was when the canoe was being carried
on the hands of the Me-ne-hu-ne—for they did not drag the canoe, they
carried it. He heard a trampling of feet. Then he heard a third hum of
voices; that was when the canoe was being left down in the shed he had
built.
Laka’s grandmother, knowing who they were, had left a feast for the
Me-ne-hu-ne—a shrimp for each, and some cooked taro leaves. They ate,
and before it was daylight they returned to the mountain where their
caves were. The boy Laka saw the Me-ne-hu-ne as they went up the side
of the mountain—hundreds of little men tramping away in the waning
darkness.
His canoe was ready, paddle and all. He took it down to the sea, and he
went across in search of his father. When he landed on the other side
he found a wise man who was able to tell him about his father, and that
he was dead indeed, having been killed by a very wicked man on his
landing. The boy never went back to his grandmother’s. He stayed, and
with the canoe that the Me-ne-hu-ne had made for him he became a famous
fisherman. From him have come my fathers and your fathers, too, O my
younger brothers.
And you who are the youngest and littlest of all—gather you the ku-kui
nuts as we go down; to-night we will make strings of them and burn
them, lighting the house. And if we have many ku-kui nuts and a light
that is long-lasting, it may be that I will tell more stories.
THE STORY OF MO-E MO-E: ALSO A STORY ABOUT PO-O AND ABOUT KAU-HU-HU THE
SHARK-GOD, AND ABOUT MO-E MO-E’S SON, THE MAN WHO WAS BOLD IN HIS WISH.
Light it now. One ku-kui nut and then another will burn along the
string as I tell my stories. It is well that you have brought so many
nuts, my younger brother.
At Ke-kaa lived Ma-ui and Mo-e Mo-e; they were friends, but no two men
could be more different: the great desire of one was to go travelling,
doing mighty deeds, and the great desire of the other was to sleep.
While Ma-ui would be travelling, Mo-e Mo-e would be sleeping. He was
called O-pe-le at first, but afterwards he was called Mo-e Mo-e because
no one before or since ever slept so much as he: he could keep asleep
from the first day of the month to the last day of the month; if a
thunder-storm happened, it would wake him up; if no thunder-storm
happened, he might go on sleeping for a whole year.
Once he went off travelling. He had not gone far when he lay down by
the roadway and slept. While he was sleeping a freshet of water flowed
down and covered him with pebbles and brambles and grasses—covered all
of him except his nostrils. Then a ku-kui nut rested in his nostril and
began to grow. It grew tall; it began to tickle his nostril; and then
Mo-e Mo-e wakened up. “Here am I,” he said, “at my favorite pastime,
sleeping, and yet I am wakened up by this cursed ku-kui tree.” He
started off then to find his friend Ma-ui.
He did not find Ma-ui. He found, however, a woman whom he liked, and he
married her and settled down in her part of the country. His wife had
much land, and Mo-e Mo-e went out and worked on it. He needed no more
sleep for a while, and he worked night and day until all the lands that
his wife owned were cleared and planted. Then one day he told her that
he would have to return to his own country. “And if something should
happen to prevent my coming back to you,” said he to his wife, “and if
a child should be born to us, name the child, if it should be a girl,
for yourself; but if it should be a boy, name him Ka-le-lea.” His wife
said she would remember what he told her, and Mo-e Mo-e started off on
his journey.
On his way he felt sleepy, and he lay down by the roadside. He fell
into one of his long slumbers. He had been sleeping for ten days, or
perhaps for two less than ten days, when two men came along, and,
seeing him lying there, took him up and carried him on their backs to
where their canoe was moored.
Now these were two men who had been sent out to find a man who might be
sacrificed to one of the gods in the temple. They were highly pleased
when they came upon one who could give them such little trouble. They
put Mo-e Mo-e in their canoe and brought him to the Island of Kau-ai.
He didn’t waken all the time they were at sea. They carried him to the
temple, and still he did not waken. Then they made ready to sacrifice
him to the god who was there.
While they were waiting for the hour of the sacrifice, a thunder-storm
came. That made Mo-e Mo-e waken up. He saw where he was: and the pig
that was to be sacrificed, and the bananas, the fish, and the awa, were
beside him. He saw the two men who had taken him, squatting down with a
spear between them, and he heard what they were saying. They, like us
here, were telling a story. “And so,” said one, “Ka-ma-lo went on his
way.” Mo-e Mo-e listened, and he heard part of the story.
Ka-ma-lo, a squealing pig upon his shoulder (said the second man), went
hurrying on his way.
No man going into danger ever went so quickly as Ka-ma-lo did. And he
was going into great danger, for he was on his way to the cavern where
the Shark-God Kau-hu-hu had his abode. And you know, my comrade, that
if a man had ever ventured into that cavern before, he never came out
of it alive.
He came to it. Before the cavern was the great sea. Inside of it were
Mo-o and Waka, the Shark-God’s watchmen.
When they saw a man hurrying up to the cavern with a squealing pig upon
his shoulders, Waka and Mo-o shouted to him to go back. But Ka-ma-lo
came right up to them. “Our lord is away,” they said, “and it is lucky
for you, O man, that he is away. Fly for your life, for he will soon
return.” Ka-ma-lo would not go. He put down on the ground the pig which
he had brought.
Waka and Mo-o ran here and there, beseeching Ka-ma-lo to go away. The
man would not go. “I have brought this pig as an offering to the
Shark-God,” he said, “and I will speak to him even if afterwards he
destroy me.” “It is now too late for you to get away,” said Waka, “for,
lo, our lord returns.” “Hide yourself in the cavern; tie up your pig,
and perhaps when our lord sleeps you will be able to get away,” said
Mo-o. They tied the pig, and they covered it up with seaweed; Ka-ma-lo
went into the cavern and hid behind one of the rocks.
A great rolling wave came to the cavern; another came, and then
another. With the eighth roller the Shark-God came out of the ocean.
Ka-ma-lo looked out and saw him. And when he looked upon him he
trembled and drew himself farther into the depths of the cavern.
The Shark-God transformed himself. He was now in the shape of a man,
but he was taller and broader than any two men that Ka-ma-lo had ever
seen. He came within the cavern, and Ka-ma-lo saw that he had still one
mark of the shark upon him: on his back and between his great shoulders
there were, as if made with tattoo, the lines of a shark’s opened
mouth.
When he came within, Kau-hu-hu began to sniff. “I smell a man, a man,”
he said. Ka-ma-lo quaked with terror: the Shark-God, with his great
height and breadth, seemed fearful to the man.
And still he moved about the cavern, and Mo-o and Waka, his watchmen,
ran this way and that way, striving to get him to give up his search.
There was a squealing outside. Kau-hu-hu stopped and ordered his
watchmen to bring to him the thing that squealed. They went outside and
came back with Ka-ma-lo’s pig.
“A pig!” sniffed the Shark-God. “Then there must be a man about. Where
is he?”
Then, in their terror, the two watchmen pointed to where Ka-ma-lo had
hidden himself. The Shark-God put down his two big hands and drew the
man up.
“Man, I will eat you,” said the Shark-God.
“I have brought this pig as an offering to you,” said Ka-ma-lo. “Do not
eat me.”
Then Kau-hu-hu wondered at a man’s being so bold as to come within his
cavern with an offering for him. “Man, why have you come?” he said.
Then said Ka-ma-lo: “Kau-hu-hu, you are a shark, but you are also a
god. I have come to ask you to avenge me upon a cruel King and a wicked
people. No one else is able to exact the vengeance that my soul craves,
and so I have come where no man ever ventured before—into your cavern
and into your presence.”
“I am a shark, but I am also a god,” said Kau-hu-hu, “and if that King
and that people deserve the vengeance that you crave, it shall be
wrought upon them. But if they do not deserve that vengeance, I will
kill you and devour you for having come into my cavern.”
“I will tell you why I crave vengeance on that King and on that
people.” And thereupon Ka-ma-lo told the Shark-God all that he had
suffered.
The King of the land I live in (said Ka-ma-lo) is the owner of a drum,
and it is a drum that he had brought to him from far Kahiki. He would
not let any one strike on this drum but himself. He made a place for
the drum, a sacred enclosure that no one might go into. Now the King of
my land, Ku-pa, is a cruel King; indeed, so cruel is he that his people
have become cruel, for the kind and the gentle have fled away, and
those who have remained under his rule have become harder and harder.
And at last it has come about that no one will get angry at even the
worst thing that the King will do.
I wish that I had fled from the land when others fled. But I had two
children, boys, and there was no place that I might have taken them to.
They used to play with the King’s children. Yesterday I went into the
forest to choose a tree that might be made into a new canoe, for I am
the King’s canoe-builder. And while I was away my two boys went towards
the King’s house. They came before the enclosure where the drum was
kept. The King’s children were not there to play with, and my two boys
played with each other for a while.
Now and then they would stand before where the drum was placed, and
look at it. They did not know that Ku-pa was watching them—watching to
see what the children would do.
At last the boys went into the sacred enclosure, and their going there
broke the law that the King had made. They sat down there, my two sons,
and they struck upon the drum. They could have struck upon it so that
the whole land would hear, or they could have struck so softly that the
noise would be only like the fall of rain upon leaves. And that was how
they struck the drum; the noise that they made was only a little noise
and like the falling of rain upon the leaves in the forest.
But the King heard even that little sound; he came very softly up to
the enclosure. The boys looked around. They saw him standing there; his
eyes were hard as I have seen them, and his lips were cruel and
revengeful. He called for his executioner. The executioner came; he
slew my two boys in the enclosure where the King’s drum is kept.
All that happened while I was in the forest. When I came back I went
into the enclosure where the King’s canoes are sheltered. I stood there
beside the great canoe that was painted red. I put my hands upon it,
for then I greatly rejoiced in this work of my hands. I put my hands
along the outrigger of the canoe. And then I looked down, and it seemed
to me that I saw a hand stretched out from under the canoe.
I stooped down, and I looked under it. I saw two bodies with their
hands outstretched. I drew them out, and I saw that they were the
bodies of my sons. And when I looked upon them I knew that my sons had
been slain by the King’s executioner.
I went away from the King’s house. I met many men, and I spoke to them,
telling them of the terrible thing that the King had done to me. But
each one I spoke to said: “Yes, such is Ku-pa, our King. He has not
dealt with you harder than he has dealt with others.” And when they
said this they looked at me; and I saw that their looks were hard, even
as the King’s.
I went within my house, and I sat there thinking. To whom could I go
for vengeance on the King? Who would be powerful enough to avenge me
upon Ku-pa? And then I thought of you, Kau-hu-hu. You would be able to
avenge me, and no one else would be able. And so I made up my mind to
go to you—even to go into the cavern where no man had ever ventured
before,
I took a pig as an offering, and I went hurrying on my way; no man
going into danger ever went so swiftly before.
Mo-e Mo-e heard no more of the story then. He stood up. The two who
were guarding him were so startled that they did not lay hands on him.
He took up the spear that was between them, and he went off.
Back to his wife’s he went, and he left the long spear with its edge of
shark’s teeth in the house. “I will have to make another journey,” he
said, “and if again anything should happen to me that will prevent my
coming back, and if a son is born to us, and if he should want to go in
search of me, give him the spear so that I may know him; and give him
the name that I told you.”
He went to work in the fields again, and he worked day and night, and
his wife’s brother Po-po-lo-au and her servant Po-o were astonished at
the work he did. And then, on the very night that his son was born,
Mo-e Mo-e fell asleep. He slept for ten days and for another ten days.
His wife, her brother, and her servant tried to waken him; all they
could do could not waken Mo-e Mo-e, Then his wife shook him; she made
noises; she poured water on his eyes, but still he slept. Then she
said, “There is no doubt about it: Mo-e Mo-e is dead.”
She called her brother and her servant, and she said to them: “The
Chief is dead. Wrap him up and carry him to the beach and cast him into
the sea; that is the best that one can do for a dead man.” Her brother
and her servant did as she ordered, and a wrap was put around Mo-e
Mo-e, and then he was carried down to the beach and cast into the sea.
Then Po-po-lo-au went home, and Po-o went home.
His wife’s name was Ka-le-ko’o-ka-lau-ae, and concerning her and her
brother Po-po-lo-au and her servant Po-o a strange story is told. After
they had left what they thought was the dead body of Mo-e Mo-e in the
sea, Po-po-lo-au and Po-o went up the mountains to get timbers for the
roofing of a house. They were far from home, and the night came on dark
and rainy. Po-o wanted to go back to the house, but Po-po-lo-au would
not return through the dark and the rain. Nothing would do him but that
they should spend the night in a cave.
So they went into a cave that no one had ever gone into before. And at
Po-po-lo-au’s desire they lighted a great fire to keep themselves from
the cold. And then, although there were things in the cave that they
should have been fearful about, they both went to sleep.
In the middle of the night Po-po-lo-au was startled by something that
he thought was happening. He wakened up, and he saw that the fire was
burning Po-o. He called him, but the servant would not waken up. He
went to him and tried to rouse him, but still he would not awaken. The
fire, which had been burning the man’s feet, went farther up his body.
Po-po-lo-au lifted him and tried by every way to bring him to
wakefulness, but there was no stir from Po-o. Then, when the fire had
burned up to his neck, Po-po-lo-au let him lie there and ran out of the
cave. He ran towards a hill. When he reached the top of it he heard a
voice calling to him, “Wait until I come to you, and we will go home
together.” He looked back, and he saw a head with fire streaming out of
it coming up the hill after him.
He ran to the valley, and the head rolled down the hill after him. He
looked back, and he saw tongues of fire shooting out of the rolling
head, and he became more frightened than before. He ran on and on.
Through many valleys he raced, and always the head raced behind him. He
reached the plain, and then he could hardly go on because of the terror
he was in.
It happened that at that time a wizard was walking with his friends
along that plain. “Do you see the person who is coming towards us?” he
said. “If he is not caught until he comes up to us, he will be saved.
But if he is caught before that, I do not know what will happen to
him.” As he said that, Po-po-lo-au came running up to them; and then
the head did not come any nearer.
Po-po-lo-au told the wizard all that had befallen him. Then he went to
his sister, the wife of Mo-e Mo-e. She asked about her servant, and he
told her of how he had been burned and how his head had chased him.
Then the wizard came into the house. “I have come to you,” he said,
“because I fear you may be burned. The head that chased this man will
come here. It will want to come within and stay in the house, but do
not ask it to come in, or you will come into its power. It will ask you
to go outside to it, but do not go out. It will ask you to send your
child out to it, but do not send him out.”
And then he said: “When you hear a whistle outside, it will mean that
the head is near. Then move into a corner of the house and keep very
still. When the outside is all lighted up you will know that it has
come, and when the inside is lighted up you will know that it has
entered the house.”
The woman stayed within the house, and about the middle of the night
she heard a whistle outside; then all outside was lighted up, and the
voice of Po-o called to her asking her to come without. “I will not go
outside, for it is raining,” she said. “There is no rain,” said the
voice of Po-o.
Then the voice spoke again and said to her, “Send out to me your little
child.” And the voice went on to say: “I have what your child liked
well—ripe bananas. Send him out to me, and I will give them to him.”
“I will not send him out to you,” the woman said, “for the child is now
asleep.”
Then the head came within the house, but the woman had hidden herself
and was not to be found. The wizard stole in; he drew the woman out of
the house, and he closed the door. The head called out: “Do not close
the door on me; I wish to come outside.” But those outside blocked up
the door and would not let it out, for they knew that what was within
the house was the demon of the cave that had gone into the man’s head.
Then fire burst out in the house; there were twelve loud sounds; the
head was shattered, and after that there was nothing ever seen of it.
And that is the strange story about Po-o.
And now we can speak of Mo-e Mo-e, or at least we can speak of Mo-e
Mo-e’s son. He grew up with a stepfather, for his mother had married
again. Now, the stepfather was not always kind to Mo-e Mo-e’s son, and
the boy was often punished by him.
One day he said to his mother: “I will go in search of my real father.”
“Your father is dead and in the sea,” said his mother. “Perhaps he is
not,” said the boy. “I will go in search of him, and I will bring with
me the spear that my father left for me.”
So he started off in search of Mo-e Mo-e, his father. Now when Mo-e
Mo-e had been flung into the sea long before, he had gone down to the
bottom. He lay there, for his slumber was still deep. The fish bit at
him, but they did not awaken him, and the salt of the deep sea went
into his skin. Still he lay there asleep. Then a thunder-storm came. He
wakened up. He went to the surface of the sea. Then he swam to the
shore.
He had been made bald by the salt water that had got into his skin. His
skin had been scraped off by the bites of the fishes. He crawled to a
pig-pen, and there he lay down. From that place he crawled to another
place. There a wizard found him; he gave Mo-e Mo-e medicine that cured
him.
Then he went back to his own home, to the place that he had first come
from. He went on no more trips after that, and he took to sleeping like
an ordinary man.
And now his son, with the great spear of dark-red wood with the ridges
of shark’s teeth upon it, went off in search of him. He came to the
Island where Mo-e Mo-e had lived when his name was O-pe-le. He went
down into the valley where O-pe-le had had his farm.
The boy came to a field where a man was planting taro. He sat down to
watch the man, holding the spear in his hands. Two men came along.
Seeing the spear that the boy held, they stopped and looked at it. “Is
it not like the spear we carried when we took away the man who slept
all the way in our canoe and all the time on the black stones of the
temple?” one said to the other. “It is the very same spear,” said the
other. “You laid it down, and I was looking at it while I was telling
you the story of Ka-ma-lo, who went to the cave of the Shark-God.” “I
never heard the rest of that story,” said the first man, “and I should
like to hear it.”
The two sat together, and then the man who had been telling the story
that Mo-e Mo-e had heard, went on.
When Ka-ma-lo had told him all that had happened, the Shark-God said to
him: “Go back to Ku-pa’s country and live there with his people. But
make ready a great offering for me—an offering of black pigs, white
fowl, and red fish—and when the new moon comes take the offering into
the temple enclosure, and stay there until you see a cloud coming over
the mountains of La-na-i. And when you see that cloud, leave the temple
enclosure and get into your canoe and go out to sea.” So Kau-hu-hu
said; then he lay down in the cavern and went to sleep. Ka-ma-lo did
not stay any longer; he went quickly out of the cavern.
He went back, and he lived for a while under the cruel King who had
destroyed his children and amongst the hard people that the King ruled
over. He began to put together the offering for Kau-hu-hu the
Shark-God; and by the time he had got all the black pigs and all the
white fowl and all the red fish, the new moon had come.
He took his offering to the temple enclosure; he left the black pigs
and the white fowl and the red fish within, and he stood upon the black
stones, and he looked towards the mountains of La-na-i.
He heard the King beating upon his drum: it was to summon all his
people to him. He heard the sound of the drum, but he did not go
towards the King’s house; he stood upon the black stones that made the
temple enclosure, and he watched and he waited, moveless as the stone
that he stood on. Louder and louder beat the King’s drum. The people
all gathered at his house. Then Ka-ma-lo saw a speck of cloud over the
mountains of La-na-i. He watched, and he saw it coming nearer and
nearer. He left the place that he had been watching from, and he went
to the beach.
As he went he saw the crowd of people that were gathered together by
the King’s drum. They called to him, but he went past them. He came to
the beach, and he pushed but in his canoe.
When he looked back he saw that the end of the rainbow was now resting
on the temple enclosure, and he knew that the Shark-God had set a guard
on the offering that he had left there. The cloud was coming nearer,
and it was growing bigger and bigger as it came. It made a darkness
over all the land.
Ka-ma-lo paddled beyond the reef, and he went far out to sea. Out of
the darkness that covered the land there came a fearful storm: down
poured the rain; the trees in the forest cracked and broke; the rivers
suddenly filled up; as they rushed into the valley, trees, houses, and
men were swept away and out to sea. Ka-ma-lo, in his canoe, saw the
red-covered drum of the King go floating by. That was the end of Ku-pa
and his people. And if the spear that this young man holds in his hands
be the same spear that I had when we were in the temple enclosure the
day I told you the beginning of the story, that spear is the only thing
that has come out of his kingdom.
Ka-le-lea then spoke up and said: “Yes, this is the spear you carried
on that occasion, for my father, Mo-e Mo-e, heard you tell the
beginning of that story; he related it to my mother, who told it to me.
And now I am seeking him; I am seeking that man, for he is my father.”
“If you are seeking the man who slept while we brought him to the
temple and slept there while we were making the preparations to
sacrifice him, you have not far to go,” said the men. “We have seen him
since, and we know where he is.” “And where is he?” asked the boy. “The
man planting taro there,” said the man, “is no other than he; he is
O-pe-le, who came to be called Mo-e Mo-e.”
Then the boy called out to the man who was planting taro in the field,
“Say, your rows of taro are crooked.” The man looked at his rows, and
then he began to straighten them. But no matter how he straightened
them, the boy would call out the same thing. Then the man said to
himself: “How strange this is! Here I have been doing this work night
and day, and my rows were never made crooked before. Now it seems that
I cannot make them straight.” Thereupon he quit working and went to the
edge of the patch where the boy was standing, the great spear in his
hands. “Whose offspring are you?” said he, when he looked at the boy
and looked at the spear. “Yours,” said the boy, “yours and
Ka-li-ko’o-ka-lau-ae’s.” “What name have you?” said the man. “I am
Ka-le-lea,” said the boy. “You have found me, my son,” said Mo-e Mo-e.
And thereupon the two went into the house.
The boy who came to Mo-e Mo-e, Ka-le-lea, is also known in our stories;
in them he is called “The Mari Who Was Bold in his Wish,” and when you
have lighted some more ku-kui nuts I will tell you how he came to get
that name.
When he grew up he became a fisherman, and he and another youth had a
house together. Ke-ino was the other youth’s name. Now whenever other
houses were dark, Ka-le-lea’s and Ke-ino’s would be lighted up. They
would have gathered many ku-kui nuts, they would string them together,
and they would light them up. And the light that Ka-le-lea and Ke-ino
had in their house would be seen by travellers and watchmen and those
who looked out of their houses at night. What was being done in the
house where there was so much light, people wondered?
Well, when Ka-le-lea and Ke-ino came into their house in the evening,
they would, first of all, partake of their evening meal. Then they
would light the ku-kui nuts and keep lighting them as they burned out.
Then they would lie down on their mats with their pillows under their
heads, and they would look up at the roof, Ka-le-lea looking at the
gable end, and Ke-ino looking at the end opposite. They would watch the
mice running along the ridge-pole of the house. Then one would say to
the other: “Here are we, Ka-le-lea and Ke-ino, awake and with lights
burning beside us. Let us keep watching the mice running along the
ridge-pole of our house, and as we watch them, let each of us tell out
his wishes.”
Then Ke-ino would say: “Here is my wish. I wish that we may sleep until
the first crowing of the cock, then waken up, and go into the field and
pull up a root for fish-bait. Then go down to the beach, pound the root
and set it for eel-bait. Then catch an eel after having waited around
the beach for a bit, go home with it, and wrap it in banana-leaves for
cooking. Put it in the oven after a while. Then, at the second crowing
of the cock, open the oven and put the eel one side to cool. Eat, after
a while, until we have had enough. Then lie down on our mats, put the
pillows under our heads, look up and watch the mice run along the
ridge-pole of our house, and tell out our wishes. That is my wish,
brother.”
Then Ka-le-lea would say: “It is a wish, but it is not a manly wish.
Listen now, and I will tell out my wishes.
“I wish that we may eat King Ka-ku-hi-hewa’s dogs that bite the faces
of the people. I wish that we may eat his hogs with the crossing tusks.
I wish that we may eat the fat fish of his ponds. And when we have
eaten all belonging to him, I wish that the King himself may prepare
the drink for us, bring it to us, and put his own cup to our lips. And
then, when we have eaten and drunken, I wish that the King may send for
his two daughters, have them brought in, and have each of them marry
one of us, and then have each couple go to live in a house that he has
had built for them. That is my wish, my brother, and I want you to know
it.”
But when Ka-le-lea would say this (and he would say it every night)
Ke-ino would pull the mat over his face, and he would say: “No, not
that wish. Never let it pass your lips again. We will surely get killed
on account of that wish.”
Now the King whom Ka-le-lea had spoken of was at that time engaged in a
war—the war of King Ka-ku-hi-hewa against King Pueo-nui. He had won
nothing so far in the war, and he was becoming disheartened. His
watchmen and his soldiers often saw the light in the house of Ka-le-lea
and Ke-ino, and one day they told the King about it.
Then the King sent his spy to see or hear what was going on in that
house. The spy stole up and lay outside. He heard Ke-ino tell his wish,
and then he heard Ka-le-lea tell his. He heard nothing more; before the
first cock crew he stole away, leaving his dagger stuck at the entrance
of the house to let Ka-le-lea and Ke-ino know that the King’s servant
had been there.
When the spy came back to the King’s house, the King was there with his
Councillor beside him, and they were talking about what should be done
to bring to some sort of end the war against King Pueo-nui. Said the
King when the spy came to them: “What is happening in the house that I
sent you to?”
Said the spy: “This and this.” Thereupon he told all he had heard. When
he spoke about Ka-le-lea’s wish the King became very angry. “Because I
am not winning the war,” he said, “these people think they can make
mock of me! Eat my dogs and my hogs and my fat fish indeed! Have me
prepare the drink for them and put my own cup to their mouths! And then
give my daughters in marriage to two such fellows! Tell me, my
Councillor, how should I have them slain?”
But the Councillor was not for having Ka-le-lea and Ke-ino put to death
in any way. “Rather carry out the wish that the boldest of them spoke
out,” he said. “If any one can help you in the war, it is that man.
Send for both of them and carry out the bold one’s wish to the very
end. You have a wish too: it is to win the whole Island for yourself.
That man, believe me, is the one who can help you to have that wish of
yours made real.” The King agreed at last to let Ka-le-lea and Ke-ino
live, and he even agreed to carry out to its very end the wish that
Ka-le-lea had made. He ordered his men to cut timber and build houses
for the two fishermen and the wives he was going to give them, and
after that he sent an officer with soldiers to bring Ka-le-lea and
Ke-ino to him.
Ke-ino was the first to waken up that morning. And when he went to the
door he saw the dagger that was stuck at the entrance. Then he knew
that the King’s servant had been listening in the night and that he had
heard all that had been said. “We are going to be killed,” he said to
Ka-le-lea; “your terrible wish has been overheard, and the two of us
are going to die for it.”
But Ka-le-lea only stirred on the mat he was lying on; he didn’t even
get up to go to the door. And then Ke-ino saw a company of people
coming out of the King’s house. They carried axes. “Here are our
deaths,” said Ke-ino. But the procession he saw was that of the King’s
servants as they went towards the mountain to cut timbers for the two
houses that were to be built, according to the Councillor’s advice and
the King’s orders, for himself and Ka-le-lea and the wives who were to
be given to them—the King’s two daughters.
Later on, another procession came from the King’s house. This one came
straight towards their house. The men were armed with spears, and the
officers had on their shoulders cloaks of bright feathers, and their
war-helmets were on their heads. Ke-ino said: “Our deaths are now close
to us.” But all that Ka-le-lea answered was: “Keep your eye on them.”
He did not move until then. Then he rose up from the mat he had been
sleeping on, and he took up his club. He went outside, and by this time
the armed men had come up. The officer said: “We have come to take you
two before the king.” Ka-le-lea said never a word, but with his great
club he struck the house a mighty blow, and he scattered its thatch and
its timbers in all directions.
Then, very much to their surprise, Ka-le-lea and Ke-ino were put into a
litter and carried on the shoulders of the soldiers. They were brought
before the King. They were served according to the wish of Ka-le-lea:
the dogs and the hogs and the fat fish were given them to eat; the King
prepared the drink for them, and in his own cup he brought it to
Ka-le-lea and Ke-ino. And when they had drunken, the King’s daughters
were brought before them. One was wed to Ka-le-lea, and the other was
wed to Ke-ino. And then each couple was given a house to live in, a
house that the King had had built for them in a single day.
Ka-le-lea, the one who had uttered the bold wish, was not seen much
after that. He stayed in the house that had been given him. Ke-ino was
the one who was around all the time. And the King took Ke-ino and made
him an officer, and gave him a feather cape for his shoulders and a
war-helmet to go on his head. After that, Ke-ino went into the fight
with a company of men; every day he won a victory. But, for all that,
the war still went on.
Ka-le-lea stayed in the house all day with his wife, the King’s
daughter. He had no war-helmet, no feather cape, and he never took a
company of men out to battle. Ke-ino was the great man now, and
Ka-le-lea was never spoken of.
Still the war went on. But after the first crow of the cock, a man with
a great club used to go to Ha-la-wa, where the officers and chiefs of
Pueo-nui’s army were, and do battle with them. This the man did every
day. He would come upon a company of them, and fight with them,
striking right and left with his club. He would slay them all. Then he
would gather up their feather capes and their war-helmets, and he would
run, run away. The fighting chiefs were all killed by him, and
Pueo-nui’s army melted away. There were stories about how the chiefs
were killed in the early morning, and of how their feather capes and
their war-helmets were taken away. No one knew the warrior who fought
with them and overcame them. But the King was sure that Ke-ino was the
one who did it all.
When the last of Pueo-nui’s fighting chiefs was killed, an end came to
the war, and Pueo-nui gave his lands and his kingdom to King
Ka-ku-he-hewa. And that very morning, as the stranger warrior who had
done battle with the chiefs was running back, he was seen by a watchman
in the light of the early morning. The watchman flung a spear at the
running man. It struck him on the arm, just above the wrist. He kept on
running. The spear had a hook, and the watchman knew that it would be
hard for the warrior to draw it out of the flesh of his arm.
And now the King made, up his mind to give a great reward to Ke-ino,
and to get rid of Ka-le-lea, the fellow whom no one had ever seen
outside his house. He made a proclamation, declaring his victory in the
war, and telling how much of it was due to his son-in-law Ke-ino. And
every one was satisfied, for every one was sure that Ke-ino had won the
war. Every one, that is, except the King’s Councillor and the watchman
who had flung the spear at the running man. The watchman kept on saying
that it was not Ke-ino but another man who had slain the fighting
chiefs of Pueo-nui’s army and had carried off their feather capes and
their war-helmets.
The Councillor advised the King to bring all his people together, men,
women, and children. All came to a place near the King’s house—all but
those who fell down and who were not able to get up again. “Are all
your people here, O King?” asked the Councillor. “All are here,” said
the King, “except that fellow Ka-le-lea. He is asleep at home. His
father, they say, was a good sleeper, and my son-in-law takes after his
father.” “Nevertheless,” said the Councillor, “send for him, and bring
him here.”
Then Ka-le-lea was sent for. He came, and he saw all the people
gathered before the King’s house. He saw Ke-ino there in great state,
with a bright feather cape on his shoulders and a war-helmet on his
head. He looked at Ke-ino, and Ke-ino looked at him. The watchman, who
had been looking at all who came, saw him, and he made a sign to the
Councillor.
Then said the Councillor to the King: “Send to this man’s house, and
have a search made in it. And all that your men find hidden in it, have
them bring here.” Men were sent to Ka-le-lea’s house. They returned
with feather capes and war-helmets enough to make a great pile. And
then the watchman pointed to Ka-le-lea’s arm, and showed the hook of a
spear in the flesh of it.
And when the watchman told of how he had flung his spear at the warrior
who had slain the last of Pueo-nui’s fighting chiefs, it was seen by
all that Ka-le-lea, and not Ke-ino, was the man who had won the war.
After that he was made the King’s chief officer. But he did nothing
against Ke-ino, who came to serve under him.
And this is the story of Mo-e Mo-e’s son, Ka-le-lea. Soon after,
Ka-ku-he-hiwa died. Ka-le-lea came to rule in his stead, for all the
people clamored to have over them the Man Who Was Bold in His Wish.
THE WOMAN FROM LALO-HANA, THE COUNTRY UNDER THE SEA.
Long, long ago, my younger brothers, there lived in Hawaii a King whose
name was Koni-konia. He sent his fishermen out to catch deep-sea fish
for him, and they, without knowing it, let down their lines and
fish-hooks at a place where, before this, strange things had happened.
In a while after they had let them down, the hooks were taken off the
lines. The fishermen wondered at this, for they knew that no fish had
bitten at their baits. They went back to the King, and they told him
what had happened. There had come no quiver on their lines, they said,
as there would have come if fish had touched their baits, and their
hooks had been cut off the lines as if some one with a knife had done
it.
Now the King had heard before of strange things happening at the place
in the sea where the fishermen had been; and after they had shown him
the lines with the hooks cut off, he sent for a wizard, that he might
learn from him how these strange things had come to be.
The wizard (he was called a Kahuna) came before the King, and after he
had been told of what had happened to the fishermen’s lines he said:
“Your fishermen let their lines down over Lalo-hana, a country that is
at the bottom of the sea, just under the place where they let their
canoes rest. A woman lives there, a very beautiful woman of the sea
whose name is Hina; all alone she lives there, for her brothers, who
were given charge of her, have gone to a place far off.” When the King
heard of this beautiful woman of the sea, he longed to see her and to
have her for his wife.
The Kahuna told him how she might be brought out of the sea to him. The
King was to have a great many images made—images of a man, each image
to be as large as a man, with pearl-shell eyes and dark hair, and with
a malo or dress around it. Some of the images were to be brought out to
sea, and some of them were to be left on the beach and along a path
that went up to the King’s house; and one of them was to be left
standing by the door of the house.
The Kahuna went with the men who had taken the images in their canoes.
When they came to that part of the sea that the country of Lalo-hana
was under, the Kahuna told the men to let down one of the images. Down,
down, the image went, a rope around it. It rested on the bottom of the
sea. Then another image was let down. But this image was not let as far
as the bottom of the sea: it was held about the height of a house above
the bottom. Then another image was let down and held above that, and
then another image, and another image, all held one above another,
while other images were left standing in canoes that went in a line
back to the beach. And when all the images were in their places, a loud
trumpet was blown.
The Woman of Lalo-hana, Hina, came out of her house, that was built of
white and red coral, and she saw the image of a man of dark color, with
dark hair and eyes of pearl-shell, standing before her. She was
pleased, for she had never seen even the likeness of a man since her
brothers had gone away from her; and she went to the image, and she
touched it. As she did so she saw an image above her; and she went and
she touched this image too. And all the way up to the top of the sea
there were images; and Hina went upward, touching them all.
When she came up to the surface of the sea she saw canoes, and in each
canoe there was an image standing. Each one seemed to be more beautiful
than the others; and Hina swam on and on, gazing on each with delight
and touching this one and that one.
And so Hina, the Woman of the Sea, came to the beach. And on the beach
there were other images; and she went on, touching each of them. And so
she went through the grove of coco-nut trees and came before the King’s
house. Outside the house there was a very tall image with very large
pearl-shell eyes and with a red malo around it. Hina went to that
image. The wreath of sea-flowers that she had in her hair was now
withered with the sun; the Woman of Lalo-hana was wearied now, and she
lay down beside the image and fell asleep.
When she wakened it was not the image, but the King, who was beside
her. She saw him move his hands, and she was frightened because of the
movements she saw him make and the sounds that were around her after
the quiet of the sea. Her wreath of sea-flowers was all shrivelled up
in the sunlight. The man kissed her, and they went together into the
house.
And so the Woman of Lalo-hana, the Country under the Sea, came to
Hawaii and lived there as the wife of Koni-konia, the King.
After a while, when she had learned to speak to him, Hina told
Koni-konia about precious things that she had in her house in
Lalo-hana, the Country under the Sea, and she begged the King to send a
diver to get these things and bring them to her. They were in a
calabash within her house, she said. And she told the King that the
diver who brought it up was not to open the calabash.
So Koni-konia the King sent the best of his divers to go down to
Lalo-hana, the Country under the Sea, and bring up the calabash that
had Hina’s precious things in it. The diver went down, and found the
house of red and white coral, and went within and took the calabash
that was there. He brought it back without opening it and gave it to
Hina.
After some days Hina opened the calabash. Within it was the moon. It
flew up to the heavens, and there it shone clear and bright. When it
shone in the heavens it was called Kena. But it shone down on the sea
too, and shining on the sea it was called Ana.
And then, seeing Ana in the sea, the Woman of Lalo-hana was frightened.
“My brothers will come searching for me,” she said. And the next day
she said, “My brothers will bring a great flood of waters upon this
land when they come searching for me.” And after that she said, “My
brothers will seek me in the forms of pa-o’o fishes, and the Ocean will
lift them up so that they can go seeking me.” When the King heard her
say this he said, “We will go far from where the Ocean is, and we will
seek refuge on the tops of the mountains.”
So the King with Hina, with all his people, went to the mountains. As
they went they saw the Ocean lifting up. Hina’s brothers in the forms
of pa-o’o fishes were there, and the Ocean lifted them up that they
might go seeking her.
Over the land and up to the mountains the Ocean went, bearing the
pa-o’o fishes along. Koni-konia and his people climbed to the tops of
the mountains. To the tops of the mountains the Ocean went, bearing the
pa-o’o fishes that were Hina’s brothers. Koni-konia and Hina and all
the people climbed to the tops of the trees that were on the tops of
the mountains. And then the Ocean, having covered the tops of the
mountains, went back again, drawing back the pa-o’o fishes that were
Hina’s brothers. And it was in this way that the Great Flood came to
Hawaii.
And after the waters of the Ocean had gone back to their own place,
Koni-konia the King, with Hina and his people, went back to the place
where their houses had been. All was washed away; there were mud and
sand where their houses and fields had been. Soon the sun dried up the
puddles and the wetness in the ground; growth came again; they built
their houses and cultivated their fields; and Koni-konia, with Hina and
with his people, lived once again in a wide land beside the great
ocean.
HINA, THE WOMAN IN THE MOON.
A weary woman was Hina, and as the years grew on her she grew more and
more weary. All day she sat outside her house beating out tapas for
clothes for her family, making cloths out of the bark of a tree by
beating it on a board with a mallet. Weary indeed was Hina with making
tapas all the day outside her house. And when she might see no more to
beat out the tapas, she would have to get her calabash and bring water
to the house. Often she would stumble in the dark, coming back with her
calabash of water. There was no one in her house to help her. Her son
went sailing from island to island, robbing people, and her daughter
went to live with the wild people in the forest. Her husband had become
bad-tempered, and he was always striving to make her do more and more
work.
As Hina grew old she longed more and more to go to a place where she
might sit and rest herself. And one day, when she was given a new task
and was sent to fish up shrimps amongst the rocks with a net, she cried
out, “Oh, that I might go away from this place, and to a place where I
might stay and rest myself.”
The Rainbow heard Hina and had pity on her. It made an arching path for
her from the rocks up to the heavens. With the net in her hands she
went along that path. She thought she would go up to the heavens and
then over to the Sun, and that she would go into the Sun and rest
herself there.
She went higher and higher along the arch of the Rainbow. But as she
went on, the rays of the Sun beat on her more and more strongly. She
held the net over her head and went on and on. But when she went beyond
the clouds and there was nothing to shelter her, the rays of the Sun
burnt her terribly. On and on she went, but as she went higher she
could only crawl along the path. Then the fire of the Sun’s rays began
to torture her and shrivel her. She could go no farther, and, slipping
back along the Rainbow arch, she came to earth again.
It was dark now. She stood outside her house and saw her husband coming
back from the pool with a calabash of water, stumbling and saying
ill-tempered words about her. And when she showed herself to him he
scolded because she had not been there to bring the calabash of water
to the house.
Now that the Sun was gone down and his rays were no longer upon her,
her strength came back to Hina. She looked up into the sky, and she saw
the full Moon there; and she said: “To the Moon I will go. It is very
quiet, and there I can sit for a long, long time and rest myself.”
But first she went into the house for the calabash that held all the
things that on earth were precious to her. She came out of her house
carrying the calabash, and there before her door was a moon-rainbow.
Her husband came and asked her where she was going; because she carried
her calabash he knew she was going far. “I am going to the Moon, to a
place where I can rest myself,” she said. She began to climb along the
arch of the Rainbow. And now she was almost out of her husband’s reach.
But he sprang up and caught her foot in his hand. He fell back,
twisting and breaking her foot as he fell.
But Hina went on. She was lamed, and she was filled with pain; and yet
she rejoiced as she went along through the quiet night. On and on she
went. She came to where the Stars were, and she said incantations to
them, that they might show her how to come to the Moon. And the Stars
showed her the way, and she came at last to the Moon.
She came to the Moon with the calabash that had her precious
possessions; and the Moon gave her a place where she might rest. There
Hina stayed. And the people of Hawaii can look up to the bright Moon
and see her there. She sits, her foot lamed, and with her calabash by
her side. Seeing her there, the people call her, not “Hina” any more,
but “Lono Moku”—that is, “Lame Lono.” And standing outside the door you
can see her now—Hina, the Woman in the Moon. But some say that, instead
of the calabash, she took with her her tapa-board and mallet; and they
say that the fine fleecy clouds that you see around the Moon are really
the fine tapa-cloths that Hina beats out.
NOTES.
THE BOY PU-NIA AND THE KING OF THE SHARKS
Given in the Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and
Folk-lore, Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian
Ethnology and Natural History, Vol. V, Part II, with the title Kaao no
Punia, Legend of Pu-nia.
Like many another Polynesian hero, Pu-nia had a mother whose name was
Hina. The shark’s name, Kai-ale-ale, means “Sea in great commotion.”
But the kindling of the fire inside the shark with the fire-sticks
could not have been so easy as it is made to appear. Melville, in
Typee, describes the operation of fire-making as laborious. This is how
he saw it being done:
“A straight, dry, and partly decayed stick of the hibiscus, about six
feet in length, and half as many inches in diameter, with a smaller bit
of wood not more than a foot long, and scarcely an inch wide, is as
invariably to be met with in every house in Typee as a box of lucifer
matches in the corner of the kitchen cupboard at home. The islander,
placing the larger stick obliquely against some object, with one end
elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees, mounts astride of it like
an urchin about to gallop off upon a cane, and then grasping the
smaller one firmly in both hands, he rubs its pointed end slowly up and
down the extent of a few inches on the principal stick, until at last
he makes a narrow groove in the wood, with an abrupt termination at the
point furthest from him, where all the dusty particles which the
friction creates are accumulated in a little heap.
“At first Kory-Kory goes to work quite leisurely, but gradually
quickens his pace, and waxing warm in the employment, drives the stick
furiously along the smoking channel, plying his hands to and fro with
amazing rapidity, the perspiration starting from every pore. As he
approaches the climax of his effort, he pants and gasps for breath, and
his eyes almost start from their sockets with the violence of his
exertions. This is the critical stage of the operation; all his
previous labours are in vain if he cannot sustain the rapidity of the
movement until the reluctant spark is produced. Suddenly he stops,
becomes perfectly motionless. His hands still retain their hold of the
smaller stick, which is pressed convulsively against the further end of
the channel among the fine powder there accumulated, as if he had just
pierced through and through some little viper that was wriggling and
struggling to escape from his clutches. The next moment a delicate
wreath of smoke curls spirally into the air, the heap of dusty
particles glow with fire, and Kory-Kory, almost breathless, dismounts
from his steed.”
THE SEVEN GREAT DEEDS OF MA-UI
The number seven has no significance in Polynesian tradition; the
number eight has. It just happened that the number of Ma-ui’s deeds
that had interest for me as a story-teller was seven. Fornander has
only short and passing notices of Ma-ui, and all the material for the
stories given here has been taken from Mr. W. D. Westervelt’s valuable
Ma-ui the Demi-God. Ma-ui is a hero for all the Polynesians, and Mr.
Westervelt tells us that either complete or fragmentary Ma-ui legends
are found in the single islands and island groups of Aneityum, Bowditch
or Fakaofa, Efate, Fiji, Fotuna, Gilbert, Hawaii, Hervey, Huahine,
Mangaia, Manihiki, Marquesas, Marshall, Nauru, New Hebrides, New
Zealand, Samoa, Savage, Tahiti or Society, Tauna, Tokelau, and Tonga.
Ma-ui is, in short, a Pan-Polynesian hero, and it is as a
Pan-Polynesian hero that I have treated him, giving his legend from
other sources than those that are purely Hawaiian. However, I have
tried to make Hawaii the background for all the stories. Note that
Ma-ui’s position in his family is the traditional position for a
Polynesian hero—he is the youngest of his brothers, but, as in the case
of other heroes of the Polynesians, he becomes the leader of his
family.
Ma-ui’s mother was Hina. She is distinguished from the numerous Hinas
of Polynesian tradition by being “Hina-a-ke-ahi,” “Hina-of-the-Fire.” I
follow the New Zealand tradition that Mr. Westervelt gives in telling
how Ma-ui was thrown into the sea by his mother and how the jelly-fish
took care of him. Ma-ui’s throwing the heavy spear at the house is also
out of New Zealand. His overthrowing of the two posts is out of the
Hawaiian tradition. But in that tradition it is suggested that his two
uncles were named “Tall Post” and “Short Post.” They had been the
guardians of the house, and young Ma-ui had to struggle with them to
win a place for himself in the house. Ma-ui’s taking away invisibility
from the birds and letting the people see the singers is out of the
Hawaiian tradition. So is Ma-ui’s kite-flying. The Polynesian people
all delighted in kite-flying, but the Hawaiians are unique in giving a
kite to a demi-god. The incantation beginning “O winds, winds of
Wai-pio” is Hawaiian; the other incantation, “Climb up, climb up,” is
from New Zealand.
The fishing up of the islands is supposed by scholars to be a folk-lore
account of the discovery of new islands after the Polynesian tribes had
put off from Indonesia. The story that I give is mainly Hawaiian—it is
out of Mr. Westervelt’s book, of course—but I have borrowed from the
New Zealand and the Tongan accounts too; the fish-hook made from the
jaw-bone of his ancestress is out of the New Zealand tradition, and the
chant “O Island, O great Island” is Tongan.
The story of Ma-ui’s snaring the sun is Hawaiian, and the scene of
this, the greatest exploit in Polynesian tradition, is on the great
Hawaiian mountain Haleakala. The detail about the nooses of the ropes
that Ma-ui uses—that they were made from the hair of his sister—is out
of the Tahitian tradition as given by Gill.
The Hawaiian story about Ma-ui’s finding fire is rather tame; he forces
the alae or the mud-hen to give the secret up to him. I have added to
the Hawaiian story the picturesque New Zealand story of his getting
fire hidden in her nails from his ancestress in the lower world. There
is an Hawaiian story, glanced at by Fornander, in which Ma-ui obtains
fire by breaking open the head of his eldest brother.
The story of Ma-ui and Kuna Loa, the Long Eel, as I give it, is partly
out of the Hawaiian, partly out of the New Zealand tradition, and there
is in it, besides, a reminiscence of a story from Samoa. All of these
stories are given in Mr. Westervelt’s book. That Kuna Loa tried to
drown Ma-ui’s mother in her cave—that is Hawaiian; that Hina was driven
to climb a bread-fruit tree to get away from the Long Eel—that is
derived from the Samoan story. And the transformation of the pieces of
Kuna Loa into eels, sea monsters, and fishes is out of the New Zealand
tradition about Ma-ui. “When the writer was talking with the natives
concerning this part of the old legend,” says Mr. Westervelt, “they
said, ‘Kuna is not a Hawaiian word. It means something like a snake or
a dragon, something we do not have in these islands.’ This, they
thought, made the connection with the Hina legend valueless until they
were shown that Tuna (or Kuna) was the New Zealand name of the reptile
which attacked Hina and struck her with his tail like a crocodile, for
which Ma-ui killed him. When this was understood, the Hawaiians were
greatly interested to give the remainder of the legend, and compare it
with the New Zealand story.” “This dragon,” Mr. Westervelt goes on,
“may be a remembrance of the days when the Polynesians were supposed to
dwell by the banks of the River Ganges in India, when crocodiles were
dangerous enemies and heroes saved families from their destructive
depredations.” Mrs. A. P. Taylor of Honolulu writes me in connection
with this passage: “There is a spring in the Palama district in
Honolulu called Kuna-wai (‘Eel of Water’). In Hawaiian, kuna-kuna means
eczema, a skin disease.”
The story of the search that Ma-ui’s brother made for his sister is
from New Zealand. Ma-ui’s brother is named Ma-ui Mua and Rupe. His
sister is Hina-te-ngaru-moana, “Hina, the daughter of the Ocean.”
The splendidly imaginative story of how Ma-ui strove to win immortality
for men is from New Zealand. The Goblin-goddess with whom Ma-ui
struggles is Hina-nui-te-po, “Great Hina of the Night,” or “Hina, Great
Lady of Hades.” According to the New Zealand mythology she was the
daughter and the wife of Kane, the greatest of the Polynesian gods.
There seems to be a reminiscence of the myth that they once possessed
in common with the New Zealanders in the fragmentary tale that the
Hawaiians have about Ma-ui striving to tear a mountain apart. “He
wrenched a great hole in the side. Then the elepaio bird sang and the
charm was broken. The cleft in the mountain could not be enlarged. If
the story could be completed it would not be strange if the death of
Ma-ui came with his failure to open the path through the mountain.” So
Mr. Westervelt writes.
The Ma-ui stories have flowed over into Melanesia, and there is a
Fijian story given in Lorimer Fison’s Tales of Old Fiji, in which
Ma-ui’s fishing is described. Ma-ui, in that story, is described as the
greatest of the gods; he has brothers, and he has two sons with him.
With his sons he fishes up the islands of Ata, Tonga, Haabai, Vavau,
Niua, Samoa, and Fiji. Ma-ui’s sons depart from the Land of the Gods
and seize upon the islands that their father had fished up. Then
Disease and Death come to the islands that the rebel gods, Ma-ui’s
sons, have seized. Afterwards Ma-ui sent to them “some of the sacred
fire of Bulotu.”
AU-KE-LE THE SEEKER
Given in the Fornander Collection, Vol. IV, Part I, of the Memoirs of
the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, with the title He Moolelo no
Aukelenuiaiku, the Legend of Aukelenuiaiku.
Like many another Polynesian hero, Au-ke-le (to cut down his name from
the many-syllabled one which means Great Au-ke-le, son of Iku) was the
youngest born of his family. Fornander thought that his story “has
marked resemblances in several features to the Hebrew account of Joseph
and his brethren, and is traced back to Cushite origin through
wanderings and migrations”—an idea which is wholly fantastic. The story
as I have retold it is very much condensed.
Au-ke-le’s grandmother is a mo-o—literally, a lizard. Dr. Nathaniel
Emerson and Mr. William Hyde Rice translate “mo-o” by “dragon,” and I
fancy that “mo-o” created a sufficiently vague conception to allow the
fantastic and terrifying dragon to become its representative. On the
other hand, “dragon” tends to bring in a conception that is not
Polynesian. I have not rendered “mo-o” by either “lizard” or “dragon.”
I prefer to let “mo-o” remain mysterious. Note what Mr. Westervelt says
about the “mo-o” or “dragon” being a reminiscence of creatures of
another environment.
The story of Au-ke-le is mythical: it is a story about the Polynesian
gods. Au-ke-le and his brothers go from one land of the gods to
another. The “Magic” that he carries in his calabash is a godling that
his grandmother made over to him. There are many things in this story
that are difficult to make intelligible in a retelling. It is
difficult, for instance, to convey the impression that the maids whom
the Queen sends to Au-ke-le, and her brothers too, were reduced to
abject terror by Au-ke-le’s disclosing their names. But to the
Polynesians, as to other primitive peoples, names were not only
private, and intensely private, but they were sacred. To know one’s
name was to be possessed of some of one’s personality; magic could be
worked against one through the possession of a name. Our names are
public. But suppose that a really private name—a name that was given to
us by our mother as a pet name—was called out in public: how upset we
might be! Stevenson’s mother named him “Smootie” and “Baron Broadnose.”
How startled R. L. S. might have been if a stranger in a strange land
had addressed him by either name!
Later on Au-ke-le goes on the quest that was the Polynesian equivalent
of the Quest of the Holy Grail; he goes in quest of the Water of
Everlasting Life, the Water of Kane. The Polynesian thought that there
was no blessing greater than that of a long life. There are many
stories dealing with the Quest of the Water of Kane, and there is one
poem that has been translated beautifully by Dr. Nathaniel Emerson. It
is given in his Unwritten Literature of Hawaii.
A query, a question,
I put to you:
Where is the Water of Kane?
At the Eastern Gate
Where the Sun comes in at Haehae;
There is the Water of Kane.
A question I ask of you:
Where is the Water of Kane?
Out there with the floating Sun,
Where cloud-forms rest on the Ocean’s breast,
Uplifting their forms at Nohoa,
This side the base of Lehua;
There is the Water of Kane.
One question I put to you:
Where is the Water of Kane?
Yonder on mountain peak,
On the ridges steep,
In the valleys deep,
Where the rivers sweep;
There is the Water of Kane.
This question I ask of you:
Where, pray, is the Water of Kane?
Yonder, at sea, on the ocean,
In the drifting rain,
In the heavenly bow,
In the piled-up mist-wraith,
In the blood-red rainfall,
In the ghost-pale cloud-form;
There is the Water of Kane.
One question I put to you:
Where, where is the Water of Kane?
Up on high is the Water of Kane,
In the heavenly blue,
In the black-piled cloud,
In the black-black cloud,
In the black-mottled sacred cloud of the gods;
There is the Water of Kane.
One question I ask of you:
Where flows the Water of Kane?
Deep in the ground, in the gushing spring,
In the ducts of Kane and Loa,
A well-spring of water, to quaff,
A water of magic power—
The water of Life!
Life! O give us this life!
The story of Au-ke-le has a solemn if not a tragic ending, which is
unusual in Polynesian stories. Its close makes one think of that chant
that Melville heard the aged Tahitians give “in a low, sad tone”:
A harree ta fow,
A toro ta farraro,
A now ta tararta.
The palm-tree shall grow,
The coral shall spread,
But man shall cease.
PI-KO-I: THE BOY WHO WAS GOOD AT SHOOTING ARROWS
Given in the Fornander Collection, Vol. IV, Part III, of the Memoirs of
the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, with the title Kaao No Pikoiakaalala,
Legend of Pikoiakaalala (Pi-ko-i, the son of the Alala).
His father was Raven or Crow, his sisters were Rat and Bat. The arrows
that Pi-ko-i shot were not from the sort of bow that we are familiar
with; the Hawaiian bow, it must be noted, was not a complete bow. The
string hung untied from the top of the shaft; the shooter put the notch
of the arrow into the hanging string, whipped forward the shaft, and at
the same time cast the arrow, which was light, generally an arrow of
sugar-cane. The arrow was never used in war; it was used in sport—to
shoot over a distance, and at birds and at rats that were held in some
enclosure. The bird that cried out was evidently the elepaio. “Among
the gods of the canoe-makers,” says Mr. Joseph Emerson, “she held the
position of inspector of all koa trees designed for that use.” The
Hawaiian interest in riddles enters into Pi-ko-i’s story.
PAKA: THE BOY WHO WAS REARED IN THE LAND THAT THE GODS HAVE SINCE
HIDDEN
Given in the Fornander Collection, Vol. V, Part II, of the Memoirs of
the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, with the title Kaao no Kepakailiula,
the Legend of Kepakailiula.
Pali-uli, where Paka’s uncles reared him, is the Hawaiian paradise. In
a chant that Fornander quotes it is described:
O Pali-uli, hidden Land of Kane,
Land in Kalana i Hauola,
In Kahiki-ku, in Kapakapaua of Kane,
The Land whose foundation shines with fatness,
Land greatly enjoyed by the god.
“This land or Paradise,” says Fornander, “was the central part of the
world ... and situated in Kahiki-ku, which was a large and extensive
continent.” Paka emerges from this Fairy-land into a world that is
quite diurnal when he sets about winning Mako-lea. The boxing,
spear-throwing, and riddling contests that he engages in reflect the
life of the Hawaiian courts.
THE STORY OF HA-LE-MA-NO AND THE PRINCESS KAMA
Given in the Fornander Collection, Vol. V, Part II, of the Memoirs of
the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, with the title Kaao no Halemano,
Legend of Ha-le-ma-no.
Kama, or, to give her her full name, Kamalalawalu, was living under a
strict tapu. Ha-le-ma-no is no thoughtless tapu-breaker, as are other
young men in Hawaiian romance; there is very little of the mythical
element in this story; the enchantress-sister, however, is a figure
that often comes into Hawaiian romance. This story is remarkable for
its vivid rendering of episodes belonging to the aristocratic life—the
surf-riding, surely the greatest of sports to participate in, as it is
the most thrilling of sports to watch; the minstrelsy; the gambling.
The poems that Ha-le-ma-no and Kama repeat to each other are very
baffling, and are open to many interpretations. In this respect they
are like most Hawaiian poetry, which has a deliberate obscurity that
might have won Mallarmé’s admiration.
THE ARROW AND THE SWING
This is one of the most famous of the Hawaiian stories. It is given in
the Fornander Collection, Vol. V, Part I, of the Memoirs of the Bernice
Pauahi Bishop Museum, with the title He Kaao no Hiku a me Kawelu, the
Legend of Hi-ku and Ka-we-lu. It should be remembered that Hi-ku’s
arrow was more for casting than for shooting: the game that he was
playing at the opening of the story consisted in casting his arrow,
Pua-ne, over a distance. Ka-we-lu was living under tapu. But, like many
another heroine of Polynesian romance, she was not reluctant about
having the tapu broken. There is one very puzzling feature in this
story. Why did Ka-we-lu not give her lover food? Her failure to provide
something for him is against all traditions of Hawaiian hospitality. Of
course, in the old days, men and women might not eat together;
Ka-we-lu, however, could have indicated to Hi-ku where to go for food.
The food at hand might have been for women only, and tapu as regards
men. Or it might have been tapu for all except people of high rank. If
this was what was behind Ka-we-lu’s inhospitality it would account for
a bitterness in Hi-ku’s anger—she was treating him as a person of a
class beneath her. But these are guesses merely. I have asked those who
were best acquainted with the Hawaiian tradition to clear up the
mystery of Ka-we-lu’s behavior in this particular, but they all
confessed themselves baffled by it. The poems that Ka-we-lu chants to
Hi-ku, like the poems that Ha-le-ma-no chants to Kama, have a meaning
beneath the ostensible meaning of the words.
With regard to Ka-we-lu’s death it should be remembered that according
to Polynesian belief the soul was not single, but double. A part of it
could be separated or charmed away from the body; the spirit that could
be so separated from the body was called hau. In making the connection
between Hi-ku and the lost Ka-we-lu I have gone outside the legend as
given in the Fornander Collection. I have brought in Lolupe, who finds
lost and hidden things. This godling is connected with the
Hi-ku-Ka-we-lu story through a chant given by Dr. Nathaniel Emerson in
his notes to David Malo’s Hawaiian Antiquities.
Mr. Joseph Emerson gives this account of Lua o Milu, the realm of Milu,
the Hawaiian Hades: “Its entrance, according to the usual account of
the natives, was situated at the mouth of the great valley of Waipio,
on the island of Hawaii, in a place called Keoni, where the sands have
long since covered up and concealed from view this passage from the
upper to the nether world.” Fornander says that the realm of Milu was
not entirely dark. “There was light and there was fire in it.” The
swing chant that I have given to Hi-ku does not belong to the legend;
it is out of a collection of chants that accompany games. The Hawaiian
swing was different from ours; it was a single strand with a
cross-piece, and it was pulled and not pushed out.
Mr. Joseph Emerson, in a paper that I have already quoted from, The
Lesser Hawaiian Gods, says that Hi-ku’s mother was Hina, the wife of
Ku, one of the greater Polynesian gods. In that case, Hi-ku was
originally a demi-god.
THE DAUGHTER OF THE KING OF KU-AI-HE-LANI
Given in the Fornander Collection, Vol. IV, Part III, of the Memoirs of
the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, with the title Kaao no
Laukiamanuikahiki. The girl’s full name means “Bird catching leaf of
Kahiki.” Her mother is Hina, a mortal woman apparently, but her father
is a demi-god, a dweller in “the Country that Supports the Heavens.” In
the original, Ula the Prince is the son of Lau-kia-manu’s father; such
a relation as between lover and lover is quite acceptable in Hawaiian
romance. When she comes into her father’s country the girl incurs the
death-penalty by going into a garden that has been made tapu.
Lau-kia-manu, in Kahiki-ku, seems to have the rôle of Cinderella;
however, the Hawaiian story-teller gives her a ruthlessness that is not
at all in keeping with our notion of a sympathetic character.
THE FISH-HOOK OF PEARL
This simple tale is given in the Fornander Collection, Vol. IV, Part
III, of the Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Museum, with the title Kaao
no Aiai, the Legend of Aiai.
THE STORY OF KANA, THE YOUTH WHO COULD STRETCH HIMSELF UPWARDS
This story is given in the Fornander Collection, Vol. IV, Part III,
with the title Kaao no Kana a Me Niheu, Legend of Kana and Niheu. Mr.
Thrum speaks of the legend of Kana and Niheu as having “ear-marks of
great antiquity and such popularity as to be known by several
versions.” The chant in which his grandmother prays for a double canoe
for Kana is over a hundred lines long; Miss Beckwith speaks of this
chant as being still used as an incantation.
THE ME-NE-HU-NE
There are no stories of the Me-ne-hu-ne in the Fornander Collection.
Fornander uses the name, but only as implying the very early people of
the Islands. According to W. D. Alexander the name Me-ne-hu-ne is
applied in Tahiti to the lowest class of people.
The account of the Me-ne-hu-ne that I give is taken from two
sources—from Mr. William Hyde Rice’s Hawaiian Legends, published by the
Bishop Museum, and from Mr. Thomas Thrum’s Stories of the Menehunes,
published by A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago. I am indebted to Mr. Rice
for the part that treats of the history of the Me-ne-hu-ne, and to Mr.
Thrum for the two stories, “Pi’s Watercourse” and “Laka’s Adventure.”
Beginning with “The Me-ne-hu-ne,” I have treated the stories as if they
were being told to a boy by an older Hawaiian. I have imagined them
both as being with a party who have gone up into the highlands to cut
sandalwood. That would be in the time of the first successors of
Kamehameha, when the sandalwood of the islands was being cut down for
exportation to China, “the land of the Pa-ke.” As the party goes down
the mountain-side the boy gathers the ku-kui or candle-nuts for
lighting the house at night.
THE STORY OF MO-E MO-E: ALSO A STORY ABOUT PO-O AND ABOUT KAU-HU-HU THE
SHARK-GOD, AND ABOUT MO-E MO-E’S SON, THE MAN WHO WAS BOLD IN HIS WISH
The story of Opele, who came to be called Mo-e Mo-e, is given in the
Fornander Collection, Vol. V, Part I, of the Memoirs of the Bernice
Pauahi Bishop Museum, with the title He Kaao no Opelemoemoe, Legend of
Opelemoemoe; the story about Po-o is given in the Memoirs of the
Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Vol. V, Part III (the stories in this
volume do not belong to the Fornander Collection); the story about the
Shark-God is taken from an old publication of the Islands, the Maile
Quarterly; the story of the Man who was Bold in his Wish is given in
the Fornander Collection, Vol. IV, Part III, of the Memoirs of the
Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, with the title Kaao no Kalelealuaka a Me
Keinohoomanawanui, the Legend of Kalelealuaka and Keinohoomanawanui.
THE WOMAN FROM LALO-HANA, THE COUNTRY UNDER THE SEA
This story is taken from David Malo’s Hawaiian Antiquities. A variant
is given in the Fornander Collection. There are many Hinas in Hawaiian
tradition, but the Hina of this story is undoubtedly the Polynesian
moon-goddess.
HINA, THE WOMAN IN THE MOON
This story is from Mr. Westervelt’s Ma-ui the Demi-God. The husband of
this Hina was Aikanaka.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Quoted by Melville in Typee, Chapter XXV. The chronicle of de
Figeroas’s voyage—the voyage by which the Marquesas were discovered and
the Polynesians looked upon for the first time by European man—was
published in Madrid, according to Melville, in 1613. Mendaña’s voyage
was made in 1595.
[2] By Ivor H. N. Evans, M.A., Cambridge University Press, 1923.
[3] Written kapu in Hawaiian and taboo by the mariners who came first
amongst the Polynesians. I have been instructed to write the word tapu.
Its meaning is not merely “forbidden”: it means “sacred,” “inviolate,”
“belonging to the gods.” In the four stories in the present collection
where tapu is in operation I have made no attempt to explain its
significance; I have merely said that it was forbidden to go to that
place or go near that person.
[4] Published by the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian
Ethnology and Natural History, 1923.
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