Unwritten Literature of Hawaii Part 53

Ka noho a Ka-maulu-a-niho, 5 Kupuna o Kama-pua'a.

[Page 229] Ike ia ka hono a Pii-lani;[441]

Ku ka paoa i na mokupuni.

Ua puni au ia Pele, Ka u'i noho mau i Kilauea, 10 Anau hewa i ke a o Puna.

Keiki kolohe a Ku ame Hina--[442]

Hina ka opua, kau i ke olewa, Ke ao pua'a[443] maalo i Haupu.

Haku'i ku'u manao e hoi[444] i Kahiki; 15 Pau ole ka'u hoohihi ia Hale-ma'u-ma'u,[445]

I ka pali kapu a Ka-moho-alii.[446]

Kela kuahiwi a mau a ke ahi.

He manao no ko'u e noho pu; Pale 'a mai e ka hilahila, 20 I ka hakukole ia mai e ke Akua wahine Pale oe, pale au, iloko o ka hilahila; A hilahila wale ia iho no e oe; Nau no ia hale i noho.[447]

Ka hana ia a ke Ko'i maka nui, 25 Ike ia na pae moku.

He hiapo[448] au na Olopana, He hi'i-alo na Ku-ula, Ka mea nana na haka moa; [Page 230] Noho i ka uka o Ka-liu-wa'a;[449]

30 Ku'u wa'a ia ho'i i Kahiki.

Pau ia ike ana ia Hawaii, Ka aina a ke Akua i hiki mai ai, I noho malihini ai i na moku o Hawaii.

Malihini oe, malihini au, 35 Ko'i maka nui, ike ia na-pae opuaa.

A pepelu, a pepelu, a pepelu Ko ia la huelo! pili i ka lemu!

Hu! hu! hu! hu!

Ka-haku-ma'a-lani[450] kou inoa!

40 A e o mai oe, e Kane-hoa-lani.

Ua noa.

[Footnote 439: _Ko'i maka nui_ The word _maka_, which from the connection here must mean the edge of an ax, is the word generally used to mean an eye. Insistence on their peculiarity leads one to think that there must have been something remarkable about the eyes of Kama-pua'a. One account describes Kama-pua'a as having eight eyes and as many feet. It is said that on one occasion as Kama-pua'a was lying in wait for Pele in a volcanic bubble in the plains of Puna Pele's sisters recognized his presence by the gleam of his eyes. They immediately walled up the only door of exit.]

[Footnote 440: _Mala-la-walu_. A celebrated king of Maui, said to have been a just ruler, who was slain in battle on Hawaii while making war against Lono-i-ka-makahiki, the rightful ruler of the island. It may be asked if the name is not introduced here because of the word _walu_ (eight) as a reference to Kama-pua'a's eight eyes.]

[Footnote 441: _Pi'i-lani_. A king of Maui, father-in-law to Umi, the son of Liloa.]

[Footnote 442: _Hina_. There were several Hinas in Hawaiian mythology and tradition. Olopana, the son of Kamaulu-a-niho (Fornander gives this name as Ka-maunu-a-niho), on his arrival from Kahiki, settled in Koolau and married a woman named Hina. Kama-pua'a is said to be the natural son of Hina by Kahiki-ula, the brother of Olopana. To this Olopana was attributed the heiau of Kawaewae at Kaneohe.]

[Footnote 443: _A o pu-a'a_. The cloud-cap that often rested on the summit of Haupu, a mountain on Kauai, near Koloa, is said to have resembled the shape of a pig. It was a common saying, "The pig is resting on Haupu."]

[Footnote 444: _Ho'i_. To return. This argues that, if Kama-pua'a was not originally from Kahiki, he had at least visited there.]

[Footnote 445: _Hale-ma'u-ma'u_. This was an ancient lava-cone which until within a few years continued to be the most famous fire-lake in the caldera of Kilauea. It was so called, probably, because the roughness of its walls gave it a resemblance to one of those little shelters made from rough _ama'u_ fern such as visitors put up for temporary convenience. The word has not the same p.r.o.nunciation and is not to be confounded with that other word _mau_, meaning everlasting.]

[Footnote 446: _Kamoho-ali'i_. The brother of Pele; in one metamorphosis he took the form of a shark. A high point in the northwest quarter of the wall of Kilauea was considered his special residence and regarded as so sacred that no smoke or flame from the volcano ever touched it. He made his abode chiefly In the earth's underground caverns, through which the sun made its nightly transit from West back to the East. He often retained the orb of the day to warm and illumine his abode. On one such occasion the hero Mawi descended into this region and stole away the sun that his mother Hina might have the benefit of its heat in drying her tapas.]

[Footnote 447: _Hale i noho_. The word _hale_, meaning house, is frequently used metaphorically for the human body, especially that of a woman. Pele thus acknowledges her amour with Kama-pua'a.]

[Footnote 448: _Hiapo_. A firstborn child. Legends are at variance with one another as to the parentage of Kama-pua'a.

According to the legend referred to previously, Kama-pua'a was the son of Olopana's wife Hina, his true father being Kahiki-ula, the brother of Olopana. Olopana seems to have treated him as his own son. After Kama-pua'a's robbery of his mother's henroosts, Olopana chased the thief into the mountains and captured him. Kama eventually turned the tables against his benefactor and caused the death of Olopana through the treachery of a priest in a heiau; he was offered up on the altar as a sacrifice.]

[Footnote 449: _Ka-liu-wa'a_. The bilge of the canoe. This is the name of a deep and narrow valley at Hauula, Koolau, Oahu, and is well worth a visit. Kama-pua'a, hard pressed by the host of his enemies, broke through the mult.i.tude that encompa.s.sed him on the land side and with his followers escaped up this narrow gorge. When the valley came to an abrupt end before him, and he could retreat no farther, he reared up on his hind legs and scaled the mountain wall; his feet, as he sprang up, scored the precipice with immense hollowed-out grooves or flutings. The Hawaiians call these _wa'a_ from their resemblance to the hollow of a Hawaiian canoe. This feat of the hog-G.o.d compelled recognition of Kama-pua'a as a deity; and from that time no one entered Ka-liu-wa'a valley without making an offering to Kama-pua'a.]

[Footnote 450: _Ka-haku-ma'a-lani._ A name evidently applied to Kama-pua'a.]

[Translation]

_Song_

Ax of broadest edge I'm hight; The island groups I've visited, Islands of Mala-la-walu, Seat of Ka-maulu-a-niho, 5 Grandam of Kama, the swine-G.o.d.

I have seen Pi'i-lani's glory, Whose fame spreads over the islands.

Enamored was I of Pele; Her beauty holds court at the fire-pit, 10 Given to ravage the plains of Puna.

Mischievous son of Ku, and of Hina, Whose cloud-bloom hangs in ether, The pig-shaped cloud that shadows Haupu.

An impulse comes to return to Kahiki-- 15 The chains of the pit still gall me, The tabu cliff of Ka-moho-alii, The mount that is ever ablaze.

I thought to have domiciled with her; Was driven away by mere shame-- 20 The shameful abuse of the G.o.ddess!

Go thou, go I--a truce to the shame.

It was your manners that shamed me.

Free to you was the house we lived in.

These were the deeds of Broad-edged-Ax, 25 Who has seen the whole group of islands.

Olopana's firstborn am I, Nursed in the arms of Ku-ula; [Page 231] Hers were the roosts for the gamec.o.c.ks.

The wilds of Ka-liu-wa'a my home, 30 That too my craft back to Kahiki; This my farewell to Hawaii, Land of the G.o.d's immigration.

Strangers we came to Hawaii; A stranger thou, a stranger I, 35 Called Broad-edged-Ax: I've read the cloud-omens in heaven.

It curls, it curls! his tail--it curls!

Look, it clings to his b.u.t.tocks!

Faugh, faugh, faugh, faugh, uff!

40 What! Ka-haku-ma'a-lani your name!

Answer from heaven, oh Kane!

My song it is done!

If one can trust, the statement of the Hawaiian who communicated the above mele, it represents only a portion of the whole composition, the first canto--if we may so term it--having dropped into the limbo of forgetfulness. The author's study of the mele lends no countenance to such a view. Like all Hawaiian poetry, this mele wastes no time with introductory flourishes; it plunges at once in medias res.

Hawaiian mythology figured Pele, the G.o.ddess of the volcano, as a creature of pa.s.sion, capable of many metamorphoses; now a wrinkled hag, asleep in a cave on a rough lava bed, with banked fires and only an occasional blue flame playing about her as symbols of her power; now a creature of terror, riding on a chariot of flame and carrying destruction; and now as a young woman of seductive beauty, as when she sought pa.s.sionate relations with the handsome prince, Lohiau; but in disposition always jealous, fickle, vengeful.

Kama-pua'a was a demiG.o.d of anomalous birth, character, and make-up, sharing the nature and form of a man and of a hog, and a.s.suming either form as suited the occasion. He was said to be the nephew of Olopana, a king of Oahu, whose kindness in acting as his foster father he repaid by the robbery of his henroosts and other unfilial conduct. He lived the lawless life of a marauder and freebooter, not confining his operations to one island, but swimming from one to another as the fit took him. On one occasion, when, the farmers of Waipi'o, whom he had robbed, a.s.sembled with arms to bar his retreat and to deal vengeance upon him, he charged upon the mult.i.tude, overthrew them with great slaughter, and escaped with his plunder.

Toward Pele Kama-pua'a a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of a lover, whose approaches she at one time permitted to her peril. The incident took place in one of the water caves--volcanic bubbles--in Puna, and at the level of the ocean; but when he had the audacity to invade her privacy and call to her as she reposed in her home at Kilauea she repelled his advances and answered his persistence with a fiery onset, from which he [Page 232] fled in terror and discomfiture, not halting until he had put the width of many islands and ocean channels between himself and her.

In seeking an explanation of this myth of Pele, the volcano G.o.d and Kama-pua'a, who, on occasion, was a sea-monster, there is no necessity to hark back to the old polemics of Asia. Why not account for this remarkable myth as the statement in terms of pa.s.sion familiar to all Hawaiians of those impressive natural phenomena that were daily going on before them? The spectacle of the smoking mountain pouring out its fiery streams, overwhelming river and forest, halting not until they had invaded the ocean; the awful turmoil as fire and water came in contact; the quick reprisal as the angry waves overswept the land; then the subsiding and retreat of the ocean to its own limits and the restoration of peace and calm, the fiery mount still unmoved, an apparent victory for the volcanic forces. Was it not this spectacular tournament of the elements that the Hawaiian sought to embody and idealize in his myth of Pele and Kama-pua'a?[451]

[Footnote 451: "The Hawaiian tradition of _Pele_, the dread G.o.ddess of the volcanic fires," says Mr. Fornander, "a.n.a.logous to the Samoan _Fe'e_, is probably a local adaptation in aftertimes of an elder myth, half forgotten and much distorted. The contest related in the legend between Pele and _Kamapua'a_, the eight-eyed monster demiG.o.d, indicates, however, a confused knowledge of some ancient strife between religious sects, of which the former represented the wors.h.i.+pers of fire and the latter those with whom water was the princ.i.p.al element worthy of adoration."

(Abraham Fornander, The Polynesian Race, pp. 51, 52, Trubner & Co., London.)]

The likeness to be found between the amphibious Kama-pua'a and the hog appeals picturesquely to one's imagination in many ways. The very grossness of the hog enables him becomingly to fill the role of the Beast as a foil to Pele, the Beauty. The hog's rooting snout, that ravages the cultivated fields; his panicky retreat when suddenly disturbed; his valiant charge and stout resistance if cornered; his lowered snout in charge or retreat; his curling tail--how graphically all these features appeal to the imagination in support of the comparison which likens him to a tidal wave.

[Page 233]

x.x.xIV.--THE HULA OHELO

The hula _ohelo_ was a very peculiar ancient dance, in which the actors, of both s.e.xes, took a position almost that of reclining, the body supported horizontally by means of the hand and extended leg of one side, in such a manner that flank and b.u.t.tock did not rest upon the floor, while the free leg and arm of the opposite side swung in wide gestures, now as if describing the arch of heaven, or sweeping the circle of the horizon, now held straight, now curved like a hook. At times the company, acting in concert, would s.h.i.+ft their base of support from the right hand to the left hand, or vice versa. The whole action, though fantastical, was conducted with modesty. There was no instrumental accompaniment; but while performing the gymnastics above described the actors chanted the words of a mele to some Old World tune, the melody and rhythm of which are lost.

A peculiar feature of the training to which pupils were subjected in preparation for this dance was to range them in a circle about a large fire, their feet pointing to the hearth. The theory of this practice was that the heat of the fire suppled the limbs and imparted vivacity to the motions, on the same principle apparently as fire enables one to bend into shape a crooked stick. The word _kapuahi_, fireplace, in the fourth line of the mele, is undoubtedly an allusion to this practice.

The fact that the climate of the islands, except in the mountains and uplands, is rarely so cold as to make it necessary to gather about a fire seems to argue that the custom of practising this dance about a fireplace must have originated in some land of climate more austere than Hawaii.

It is safe to say that very few k.u.mu-hulas have seen and many have not even heard of the hula ohelo. The author has an authentic account of its production at Ewa in the year 1856, its last performance, so far as he can learn, on the public stage.