The Hawaiian Romance of Laieikawai | Page 9

while they dwelt there never did they weary of life. Never did they even see the person who prepared their food, nor the food itself save when, at mealtimes, the birds brought them food and cleared away the remnants when they had finished. So Paliuli became to them a land beloved."
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 may impart to their offspring on earth. As he surveys the world about him the Polynesian supposes the signs of the gods who rule the heavens to appear on earth, which formerly they visited, traveling thither as cloud or bird or storm or perfume to effect some marriage alliance or govern mankind. In these forms, or transformed themselves into men, they dwelt on earth and shaped the social customs of mankind. Hence we have in such a romance as the Laieikawai a realistic picture, first, of the activities of the gods in the heavens and on earth, second, of the social ideas and activities of the people among whom the tale is told. The supernatural blends into 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. In the light of such story-telling even the Polynesian creation myth may become a literal genealogy, and the dividing line between folklore and traditional history, a mere shift of attention and no actual change in the conception itself of the nature of the material universe and the relations between gods and men.

Footnotes to Section II, 4: The Earthly Paradise
[Footnote 1: Grey, pp. 1-15; White, I, 46; Baessler, Neue S��dsee-Bilder, pp. 244, 245; Gill, Myths and Songs, pp. 58-60.]
[Footnote 2: Compare Kr?mer's Samoan story (in Samoa Inseln, p. 413) of the quest after the pearl fishhooks kept by Night and Day in the twofold heavens with the Hawaiian stories collected by Fornander of Aiai and Nihoalaki. Kr?mer's story begins:
"Aloalo went to his father To appease Sina's longing; He sent him to the twofold heavens, To his grandparents, Night and Day, To the house whence drops fall spear-shaped, To hear their counsel and return. Aloalo entered the house, Took not the unlucky fishhook, Brought away that of good luck," etc.]
[Footnote 3: Kr?mer, Samoa Inseln, pp. 44, 115; Fison, pp. 16, 139-161, 163; Lesson, II, 272, 483 (see index); Mariner, II, 100, 102, 115, et seq.; Moerenhout, I, 432; Gracia, p. 40; Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 237; Gill, Myths and Songs, pp. 152-172.
In Fison's story (p. 139) the gods dwell in Bulotu, "where the sky meets the waters in the climbing path of the sun." The story goes: "In the beginning there was no land save that on which the gods lived; no dry land was there for men to dwell upon; all was sea; the sky covered it above and bounded it on every side. There was neither day nor night, but a mild light shone continually through the sky upon the water, like the shining of the moon when its face is hidden by a white cloud."]

5. THE STORY: ITS MYTHICAL CHARACTER
These mythical tales of the gods are reflected in Haleole's romance of Laieikawai. Localized upon Hawaii, it is nevertheless familiar with regions of the heavens. Paliuli, the home of Laieikawai, and Pihanakalani, home of the flute-playing high chief of Kauai, are evidently earthly paradises.[1] Ask a native where either of these places is to be found and he will say, smiling, "In the heavens." The long lists of local place names express the Polynesian interest in local journeyings. The legend of Waiopuka is a modern or at least adapted legend. But the route which the little sister follows to the heavens corresponds with Polynesian cosmogonic conceptions, and is true to ancient stories of the home of the gods.
The action of the story, too, is clearly concerned with a family of demigods. This is more evident if we compare a parallel story translated by Westervelt in "Gods and Ghosts," page 116, which, however confused and fragmentary, is clearly made up of some of the same material as Haleole's version.[2]
The main situation in this story furnishes a close parallel to the Laieikawai A beautiful girl of high rank is taken from her parents and brought up apart in an earthly paradise by a supernatural guardian, Waka, where she is waited upon by birds. A great lizard acts as her protector. She is wedded to a high taboo chief who is fetched thither from the gods, and who later is seduced from his fidelity by