Unwritten Literature of Hawaii Part 28

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

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

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

_Maka-weli, Maka-li'i, Koae'a_, and _Pa-ie-ie_ are names of places on Kauai.

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

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

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

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XIV.--THE HULA PUiLI

The character of a hula was determined to some extent by the nature of the musical instrument that was its accompaniment.

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.--Puili, bamboo-rattle.]

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

The mele next presented is by no means a modern production.

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

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

Mele

Hiki mai, niki mai ka La, e.

Aloha wale ka La e kau nei, Aia malalo o Ka-wai-hoa,[247]

A ka lalo o Kauai, o Lehua.

5 A Kauai au, ike i ka pali; A Milo-lii[248] pale ka pali loloa.

E kolo ana ka pali o Makua-iki;[249]

Kolo o Pu-a, he keiki, He keiki makua-ole ke uwe nei.

[Translation]

_Song_

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

How I love the Sun that's on high; Below it swims Ka-wai-hoa, Oa the slope inclined from Lehua.

5 On Kauai met I a pali, A beetling cliff that bounds Milo-lii, And climbing up Makua-iki, Crawling up was Pua, the child, An orphan that weeps out its tale.

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

_Mele_

Malua,[250] ki'i wai ke aloha, Hoopulu i ka liko mamane.

Uleuleu mai na manu, Inu wai lehua o Panaewa,[251]

5 E walea ana i ke onaona, Ke one wali o Ohele.

[Page 115] Hele mal nei kou aloha A lalawe i ko'u nui kino, Au i hookohu ai, 10 E kuko i ka manao.

Kuhi no paha oe no Hopoe[252]

Nei lehua au i ka hana ohi ai.

[Footnote 247: Kawaihoa. The southern point of Niihau, which is to the west of Kauai, the evident standpoint of the poet, and therefore "below" Kauai.]

[Footnote 248: _Milo-lii_. A valley on the northwestern angle of Kauai, a precipitous region, in which travel from one point to another by land is almost impossible.]

[Footnote 249: _Makua-iki_. Literally "little father," a name given to an overhanging pali, where was provided a hanging ladder to make travel possible. The series of palis in this region comes to an end at Milo-lii.]

[Footnote 250: The _Malua_ was a wind, often so dry that it sucked up the moisture from the land and destroyed the tender vegetation.]

[Footnote 251: Panaewa was a woodland region much talked of in poetry and song.]

[Footnote 252: _Hopoe_ was a beautiful young woman, a friend of Hiiaka, and was persecuted by Pele owing to jealousy. One of the forms in which she as a divinity showed herself was as a lehua tree in full bloom.]

[Translation]

_Song_

Malua, fetch water of love, Give drink to this mamane bud.

The birds, they are singing ecstatic, Sipping Panaewa's nectared lehua, 5 Beside themselves with the fragrance Exhaled from the garden Ohele.

Your love comes to me a tornado; It has rapt away my whole body, The heart you once sealed as your own, 10 There planted the seed of desire.

Thought you 'twas the tree of Hopoe, This tree, whose bloom you would pluck?

What is the argument of this poem? A pa.s.sion-stricken swain, or perhaps a woman, cries to _Malua_ to bring relief to his love-smart, to give drink to the parched _mamane_ buds--emblems of human feeling. In contrast to his own distress, he points to the birds caroling in the trees, reveling in the nectar of _lehua_ bloom, intoxicated with the scent of nature's garden. What answer does the lovelorn swain receive from the nymph he adores? In lines 11 and 12 she banteringly asks him if he took her to be like the traditional lehua tree of Hopoe, of which men stood in awe as a sort of divinity, not daring to pluck its flowers? It is as if the woman had asked--if the poet's meaning is rightly interpreted--"Did you really think me plighted to vestal vows, a tree whose bloom man was forbidden to pluck?"

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XV.--THE HULA KA-LAAU

The hula _ka-laau_ (_ka_, to strike; _laau_, wood) was named from the instruments of wood used in producing the accompaniment, a sort of xylophone, in which one piece of resonant wood was struck against another. Both divisions of the performers, the hoopaa and the olapa, took part and each division was provided with the instruments. The cantillation was done sometimes by one division alone, sometimes by both divisions in unison, or one division would answer the other, a responsive chanting that was termed _haawe aku, haawe mai_--"to give, to return."

Ellis gives a quotable description of this hula, which he calls the "hura ka raau:"

Five musicians advanced first, each, with a staff in his left hand, five or six feet long, about three or four inches in diameter at one end, and tapering off to a point at the other. In his right hand he held a small stick of hard wood, six or nine inches long, with which he commenced his music by striking the small stick on the larger one, beating time all the while with his right foot on a stone placed on the ground beside him for that purpose. Six women, fantastically dressed in yellow tapas, crowned, with garlands of flowers, having also wreaths of native manufacture, of the sweet-scented flowers of the _gardenia_, on their necks, and branches of the fragrant _mairi_ (another native plant,) bound round their ankles, now made their way by couples through the crowd, and, arriving at the area, on one side of which the musicians stood, began their dance. Their movements were slow, and, though not always graceful, exhibited nothing offensive to modest propriety. Both musicians and dancers alternately chanted songs in honor of former G.o.ds and chiefs of the islands, apparently much to the gratification of the spectators. (Polynesian Researches, by William Ellis, IV, 78-79, London, 1836.)