Hawaiian Folk Tales | Page 6

into the Hawaiian tongue, and before the
people knew much of sacred history. The native who acted as assistant
in translating the history of Joseph was forcibly struck with its
similarity to their ancient tradition. Neither is there the least room for
supposing that the songs referred to are recent inventions. They can all
be traced back for generations, and are known by various persons
residing on different islands who have had no communication with
each other. Some of them have their date in the reign of some ancient
king, and others have existed time out of mind. It may also be added,
that both their narrations and songs are known the best by the very
oldest of the people, and those who never learned to read; whose
education and training were under the ancient system of heathenism."
"Two hypotheses," says Judge Fornander, "may with some plausibility
be suggested to account for this remarkable resemblance of folk-lore.
One is, that during the time of the Spanish galleon trade, in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, between the Spanish Main and
Manila, some shipwrecked people, Spaniards and Portuguese, had
obtained sufficient influence to introduce these scraps of Bible history
into the legendary lore of this people.... On this fact hypothesis I
remark that, if the shipwrecked foreigners were educated men, or only
possessed of such Scriptural knowledge as was then imparted to the
commonality of laymen, it is morally impossible to conceive that a
Spaniard of the sixteenth century should confine his instruction to some
of the leading events of the Old Testament, and be totally silent upon
the Christian dispensation, and the cruciolatry, mariolatry, and
hagiolatry of that day. And it is equally impossible to conceive that the
Hawaiian listeners, chiefs, priests, or commoners, should have retained
and incorporated so much of the former in their own folk-lore, and yet
have utterly forgotten every item bearing upon the latter.

"The other hypothesis is, that at some remote period either a body of
the scattered Israelites had arrived at these islands direct, or in Malaysia,
before the exodus of 'the Polynesian family,' and thus imparted a
knowledge of their doctrines, of the early life of their ancestors, and of
some of their peculiar customs, and that having been absorbed by the
people among whom they found a refuge, this is all that remains to
attest their presence--intellectual tombstones over a lost and forgotten
race, yet sufficient after twenty-six centuries of silence to solve in some
measure the ethnic puzzle of the lost tribes of Israel. In regard to this
second hypothesis, it is certainly more plausible and cannot be so curtly
disposed of as the Spanish theory.... So far from being copied one from
the other, they are in fact independent and original versions of a once
common legend, or series of legends, held alike by Cushite, Semite,
Turanian, and Aryan, up to a certain time, when the divergencies of
national life and other causes brought other subjects peculiar to each
other prominently in the foreground; and that as these divergencies
hardened into system and creed, that grand old heirloom of a common
past became overlaid and colored by the peculiar social and religious
atmosphere through which it has passed up to the surface of the present
time. But besides this general reason for refusing to adopt the Israelitish
theory, that the Polynesian legends were introduced by fugitive or
emigrant Hebrews from the subverted kingdoms of Israel or Judah,
there is the more special reason to be added that the organization and
splendor of Solomon's empire, his temple, and his wisdom became
proverbial among the nations of the East subsequent to his time; on all
these, the Polynesian legends are absolutely silent."
In commenting on the legend of Hiiaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele, Judge
Fornander says: "If the Hebrew legend of Joshua or a Cushite version
give rise to it, it only brings down the community of legends a little
later in time. And so would the legend of Naulu-a-Mahea,... unless the
legend of Jonah, with which it corresponds in a measure, as well as the
previous legend of Joshua and the sun, were Hebrew anachronisms
compiled and adapted in later times from long antecedent materials, of
which the Polynesian references are but broken and distorted echoes,
bits of legendary mosaics, displaced from their original surroundings
and made to fit with later associations."

In regard to the account of the Creation, he remarks that "the Hebrew
legend infers that the god Elohim existed contemporaneously with and
apart from the chaos. The Hawaiian legend makes the three great gods,
Kane, Ku, and Lono, evolve themselves out of chaos.... The order of
creation, according to Hawaiian folk-lore, was that after Heaven and
earth had been separated, and the ocean had been stocked with its
animals, the stars were created, then