The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai | Page 4

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 is to please exhibits in transference from mouth to mouth. Nevertheless, they are jealously retentive of incident. The story-teller, generally to be found among the old people of any locality, who can relate the legends as they were handed down to him from the past is known and respected in the community. We find the same story[8] told