The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai | Page 4

4: Dr. N. B. Emerson's rendering of the myth of Pele and
Hiiaka quotes only the poetical portions. Her Majesty Queen
Liluokalani interested herself in providing a translation of the
Laieikawai, and the Hon. Sanford B. Dole secured a partial translation
of the story; but neither of these copies has reached the publisher's
hands.]
[Footnote 5: The most important of these chants translated from the
Hawaiian are the "Song of Creation," prepared by Liliuokalani; the
"Song of Kualii," translated by both Lyons and Wise, and the prophetic
song beginning "Haui ka lani," translated by Andrews and edited by
Dole. To these should be added the important songs cited by Fornander,
in full or in part, which relate the origin of the group, and perhaps the
name song beginning "The fish ponds of Mana," quoted in Fornander's
tale of Lonoikamakahiki, the canoe-chant in Kana, and the wind chants
in Pakaa.]
II. NATURE AND THE GODS AS REFLECTED IN THE STORY
1. POLYNESIAN ORIGIN OF HAWAIIAN ROMANCE
Truly to interpret Hawaiian romance we must realize at the start its
relation to the past of that people, to their origin and migrations, their
social inheritance, and the kind of physical world to which their
experience has been confined. Now, the real body of Hawaiian folklore
belongs to no isolated group, but to the whole Polynesian area. From
New Zealand through the Tongan, Ellice, Samoan, Society, Rarotongan,

Marquesan, and Hawaiian groups, fringing upon the Fijian and the
Micronesian, the same physical characteristics, the same language,
customs, habits of life prevail; the same arts, the same form of worship,
the same gods. And a common stock of tradition has passed from
mouth to mouth over the same area. In New Zealand, as in Hawaii, men
tell the story of Maui's fishing and the theft of fire.[1] A close
comparative study of the tales from each group should reveal local
characteristics, but for our purpose the Polynesian race is one, and its
common stock of tradition, which at the dispersal and during the
subsequent periods of migration was carried as common treasure-trove
of the imagination as far as New Zealand on the south and Hawaii on
the north, and from the western Fiji to the Marquesas on the east,
repeats the same adventures among similar surroundings and colored
by the same interests and desires. This means, in the first place, that the
race must have developed for a long period of time in some common
home of origin before the dispersal came, which sent family groups
migrating along the roads of ocean after some fresh land for
settlement;[2] in the second place, it reflects a period of long voyaging
which brought about interchange of culture between far distant
groups.[3] As the Crusades were the great exchange for west European
folk stories, so the days of the voyagers were the Polynesian crusading
days. The roadway through the seas was traveled by singing bards who
carried their tribal songs as a race heritage into the new land of their
wanderings. Their inns for hostelry were islets where the boats drew up
along the beach and the weary oarsmen grouped about the ovens where
their hosts prepared cooked food for feasting. Tales traveled thus from
group to group with a readiness which only a common tongue, common
interests, and a common delight could foster, coupled with the constant
competition of family rivalries.
Hawaiian tradition reflects these days of wandering.[4] A chief vows to
wed no woman of his own group but only one fetched from "the land of
good women." An ambitious priest seeks overseas a leader of divine
ancestry. A chief insulted by his superior leads his followers into exile
on some foreign shore. There is exchange of culture-gifts, intermarriage,
tribute, war. Romance echoes with the canoe song and the invocation to
the confines of Kahiki[5]--this in spite of the fact that intercourse seems

to have been long closed between this northern group and its neighbors
south and east. When Cook put in first at the island of Kauai, most
western of the group, perhaps guided by Spanish charts, perhaps by
Tahitian navigators who had preserved the tradition of ancient
voyages,[6] for hundreds of years none but chance boats had driven
upon its shores.[7] But the old tales remained, fast bedded at the
foundation of Hawaiian imaginative literature. As now recited they take
the form of chants or of long monotonous recitals like the Laieikawai,
which take on the heightened form of poetry only in dialogue or on
occasions when the emotional stress requires set song. Episodes are
passed along, from one hero cycle to another, localities and names vary,
and a fixed form in matter of detail relieves the stretch of invention; in
fact, they show exactly the same phenomena of fixing and reshaping,
that all story-telling whose object