Unwritten Literature of Hawaii | Page 4

what emotions stirred the heart of the old-time Hawaiian as he
approached the great themes of life and death, of ambition and jealousy,
of sexual passion, of romantic love, of conjugal love, and parental love,
what his attitude toward nature and the dread forces of earthquake and
storm, and the mysteries of spirit and the hereafter, we shall find our
answer in the songs and prayers and recitations of the hula.
The hula, it is true, has been unfortunate in the mode and manner of its
introduction to us moderns. An institution of divine, that is, religious,
origin, the hula in modern times [Page 8] has wandered so far and
fallen so low that foreign and
critical esteem has come to associate it with the riotous and passionate
ebullitions of Polynesian kings and the amorous posturing of their
voluptuaries. We must make a just distinction, however, between the
gestures and bodily contortions presented by the men and women, the
actors in the hula, and their uttered words. "The voice is Jacob's voice,
but the hands are the hands of Esau." In truth, the actors in the hula no
longer suit the action to the word. The utterance harks back to the
golden age; the gesture is trumped up by the passion of the hour, or
dictated by the master of the hula, to whom the real meaning of the old

bards is ofttimes a sealed casket.
Whatever indelicacy attaches in
modern times to some of the gestures and contortions of the hula
dancers, the old-time hula songs in large measure were untainted with
grossness. If there ever were a Polynesian Arcadia, and if it were
possible for true reports of the doings and sayings of the Polynesians to
reach us from that happy land--reports of their joys and sorrows, their
love-makings and their jealousies, their family spats and reconciliations,
their worship of beauty and of the gods and goddesses who walked in
the garden of beauty--we may say, I think, that such a report would be
in substantial agreement with the report that is here offered; but, if
one's virtue will not endure the love-making of Arcadia, let him banish
the myth from his imagination and hie to a convent or a nunnery.
If this book does nothing more than prove that savages are only
children of a younger growth than ourselves, that what we find them to
have been we ourselves--in our
ancestors--once were, the labor of
making it will have been not in vain'.
For an account of the first hula we may look to the story of Pele. On
one occasion that goddess begged her sisters to dance and sing before
her, but they all excused themselves, saying they did not know the art.
At that moment in came little Hiiaka, the youngest and the favorite.
Unknown to her sisters, the little maiden had practised the dance under
the tuition of her friend, the beautiful but ill-fated Hopoe. When
banteringly invited to dance, to the surprise of all, Hiiaka modestly
complied. The wave-beaten sand-beach was her floor, the open air her
hall; Feet and hands and swaying form kept time to her improvisation:
Look, Puna is a-dance in the wind;
The palm groves of Kea-au shaken.
Haena and the woman Hopoe dance and
sing
On the beach Nana-huki,
A dance of purest delight,
Down by the sea Nana-huki.

The nature of this work has made it necessary to use occasional
Hawaiian words in the technical parts. At their [Page 9] first

introduction it has seemed fitting that they should be
distinguished by italics; but, once given the entrée, it is assumed that,
as a rule, they will be granted the rights of free speech without further
explanation.
A glossary, which explains all the Hawaiian words used in the prose
text, is appended. Let no one imagine, however, that by the use of this
little crutch alone he will be enabled to walk or stumble through the
foreign ways of the simplest Hawaiian _mele_. Notes, often copious,
have been appended to many of the mele, designed