The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai Part 40

In this story it is told how Kaonohiokala was the first ghost on these islands, and from his day to this, the ghosts wander from place to place, and they resemble evil spirits in their nature.[76]

On the way back after Kaonohiokala's punishment, they encountered Kahalaomapuana in Kealohilani, and for the first time discovered she was there.

And at this discovery, Kahalaomapuana told the story of her dismissal, as we saw in Chapter XXVII of this story, and at the end Kahalaomapuana was taken to fill Kaonohiokala's place.

At Kahakaekaea, sometimes Laieikawai longed for Laielohelohe, but she could do nothing; often she wept for her sister, and her parents-in-law thought it strange to see Laieikawai's eyes looking as if she had wept.

Moa.n.a.lihaikawaokele asked the reason for this; then she told him she wept for her sister.

Said Moa.n.a.lihaikawaokele, "Your sister can not live here with us, for she is defiled with Kaonohiokala; but if you want your sister, then you go and fill Kekalukaluokewa's place." Now Laieikawai readily a.s.sented to this plan.

And on the day when Laieikawai was let down, Moa.n.a.lihaikawaokele said, "Return to your sister and live virgin until your death, and from this time forth your name shall be no longer called Laieikawai, but your name shall be 'The Woman of the Twilight,' and by this name shall all your kin bow down to you and you shall be like a G.o.d to them."

And after this command, Moa.n.a.lihaikawaokele took her, and both together mounted upon the pathway and returned below.

Then, Moa.n.a.lihaikawaokele said all these things told above, and when he had ended he returned to the heavens and dwelt in the taboo house on the borders of Tahiti.

Then, The Woman of the Twilight placed the government upon the seer; so did Laieikawai, the one called The Woman of the Twilight, and she lived as a G.o.d, and to her the seer bowed down and her kindred, according to Moa.n.a.lihaikawaokele's word to her. And so Laieikawai lived until her death.

And from that time to this she is still worshiped as The Woman of the Twilight.

(THE END)

NOTES ON THE TEXT

CHAPTER I

[Footnote 1: Haleole uses the foreign form for wife, _wahine mare_, literally "married woman," a relation which in Hawaiian is represented by the verb _hoao_. A temporary affair of the kind is expressed in Waka's advice to her granddaughter, "_O ke kane ia moeia_," literally, "the man this to be slept with".]

[Footnote 2: The chief's vow, _olelo paa_, or "fixed word," to slay all his daughters, would not be regarded as savage by a Polynesian audience, among whom infanticide was commonly practiced. In the early years of the mission on Hawaii, Dibble estimated that two-thirds of the children born perished at the hands of their parents. They were at the slightest provocation strangled or burned alive, often within the house. The powerful Areois society of Tahiti bound its members to slay every child born to them. The chief's preference for a son, however, is not so common, girls being prized as the means to alliances of rank. It is an interesting fact that in the last census the proportion of male and female full-blooded Hawaiians was about equal.]

[Footnote 3: The phrase _nalo no hoi na wahi huna_, which means literally "conceal the secret parts," has a significance akin to the Hebrew rendering "to cover his nakedness," and probably refers to the duty of a favorite to see that no enemy after death does insult to his patron's body. So the bodies of ancient chiefs are sewed into a kind of bag of fine woven coconut work, preserving the shape of the head and bust, or embalmed and wrapped in many folds of native cloth and hidden away in natural tombs, the secret of whose entrance is intrusted to only one or two followers, whose superst.i.tious dread prevents their revealing the secret, even when offered large bribes. These bodies, if worshiped, may be repossessed by the spirit and act as supernatural guardians of the house. See page 494, where the Kauai chief sets out on his wedding emba.s.sy with "the embalmed bodies of his ancestors." Compare, for the service itself, Waka's wish that the Kauai chief might be the one to hide her bones, the prayer of Aiwohikupua's seer that his master might, in return for his lifelong service, "bury his bones"--"_e kalua keai mau iwi_," and his request of Laieikawai, that she would "leave this trust to your descendants unto the last generation."]

[Footnote 4: Prenatal infanticide, _omilomilo_, was practiced in various forms throughout Polynesia even in such communities as rejected infanticide after birth. The skeleton of a woman, who evidently died during the operation, is preserved in the Bishop Museum to attest the practice, were not testimony of language and authority conclusive.]

[Footnote 5: The _manini_ (_Tenthis sandvicensis_, Street) is a flat-shaped striped fish common in Hawaiian waters. The sp.a.w.n, called _ohua_, float in a jellylike ma.s.s on the surface of the water. It is considered a great delicacy and must be fished for in the early morning before the sun touches the water and releases the sp.a.w.n, which instantly begin to feed and lose their rare transparency.]

[Footnote 6: The month _Ikuwa_ is variously placed in the calendar year.

According to Malo, on Hawaii it corresponds to our October; on Molokai and Maui, to January; on Oahu, to August; on Kauai, to April.]

[Footnote 7: The adoption by their grandparents and hiding away of the twins must be compared with a large number of concealed birth tales in which relatives of superior supernatural power preserve the hero or heroine at birth and train and endow their foster children for a life of adventure. This motive reflects Polynesian custom. Adoption was by no means uncommon among Polynesians, and many a man owed his preservation from death to the fancy of some distant relative who had literally picked him off the rubbish heap to make a pet of. The secret amours of chiefs, too, led, according to Malo (p. 82), to the theme of the high chief's son brought up in disguise, who later proves his rank, a theme as dear to the Polynesian as to romance lovers of other lands.]

CHAPTER II

[Footnote 8: The _iako_ of a canoe are the two arched sticks which hold the outrigger. The _kua iako_ are the points at which they are bound to the canoe, or rest upon it, aft and abaft of the canoe.]

[Footnote 9: The verb _hookuiia_ means literally "cause to be pierced"

as with a needle or other sharp instrument. _Kui_ describes the act of piercing, _hoo_ is the causative prefix, _ia_ the pa.s.sive particle, which was, in old Hawaiian, commonly attached to the verb as a suffix.

The Hawaiian speech expresses much more exactly than our own the delicate distinction between the subject in its active and pa.s.sive relation to an action, hence the pa.s.sive is vastly more common. Mr. J.S.

Emerson points out to me a cla.s.sic example of the pa.s.sive used as an imperative--an old form unknown to-day--in the story of the rock, Lekia, the "pohaku o Lekia" which overlooks the famous Green Lake at Kapoho, Puna. Lekia, the demiG.o.d, was attacked by the magician, Kaleikini, and when almost overcome, was encouraged by her mother, who called out, "_Pohaku o Lekia, onia a paa_"--"be planted firm." This the demiG.o.d effected so successfully as never again to be shaken from her position.]

[Footnote 10: Hawaiian challenge stories bring out a strongly felt distinction in the Polynesian mind between these two provinces, _maloko a mawaho_, "inside and outside" of a house. When the boy Kalapana comes to challenge his oppressor he is told to stay outside; inside is for the chief. "Very well," answers the hero, "I choose the outside; anyone who comes out does so at his peril." So he proves that he has the better of the exclusive company.]

[Footnote 11: In his invocation the man recognizes the two cla.s.ses of Hawaiian society, chiefs and common people, and names certain distinctive ranks. The commoners are the farming cla.s.s, _hu, makaainu, lopakuakea, lopahoopiliwale_ referring to different grades of tenant farmers. Priests and soothsayers are ranked with chiefs, whose households, _aialo_, are made up of hangers-on of lower rank--courtiers as distinguished from the low-ranking countrymen--_makaaina_--who remain on the land. Chiefs of the highest rank, _niaupio_, claim descent within the single family of a high chief. All high-cla.s.s chiefs must claim parentage at least of a mother of the highest rank; the low chiefs, _kaukaualii_, rise to rank through marriage (Malo, p. 82). The _ohi_ are perhaps the _wohi_, high chiefs who are of the highest rank on the father's side and but a step lower on the mother's.]

[Footnote 12: With this judgment of beauty should be compared Fornander's story of _Kepakailiula_, where "mother's brothers" search for a woman beautiful enough to wed their protege, but find a flaw in each candidate; and the episode of the match of beauty in the tale of _Kalanimanuia_.]

CHAPTER III

[Footnote 13: The building of a _heiau_, or temple, was a common means of propitiating a deity and winning his help for a cause. Ellis records (1825) that on the journey from Kailua to Kealakekua he pa.s.sed at least one _heiau_ to every half mile. The cla.s.sic instance in Hawaiian history is the building of the great temple of Puukohala at Kawaihae by Kamehamaha, in order to propitiate his war G.o.d, and the tolling thither of his rival, Keoua, to present as the first victim upon the altar, a treachery which practically concluded the conquest of Hawaii. Malo (p.

210) describes the "days of consecration of the temple."]

[Footnote 14: The nights of Kane and of Lono follow each other on the 27th and 28th of the month and const.i.tute the days of taboo for the G.o.d Kane. Four such taboo seasons occur during the month, each lasting from two to three days and dedicated to the G.o.ds Ku, Ka.n.a.loa, and Kane, and to Hua at the time of full moon. The night Kukahi names the first night of the taboo for Ku, the highest G.o.d of Hawaii.]

[Footnote 15: By _kahoaka_ the Hawaiians designate "the spirit or soul of a person still living," in distinction from the _uhane_, which may be the spirit of the dead. _Aka_ means shadow, likeness; _akaku_, that kind of reflection in the mists which we call the "specter in the brocken."

_Hoakaku_ means "to have a vision," a power which seers possess. Since the spirit may go abroad independently of the body, such romantic shifts as the vision of a dream lover, so magically introduced into more sophisticated romance, are attended with no difficulties of plausibility to a Polynesian mind. It is in a dream that Halemano first sees the beauty of Puna. In a Samoan story (Taylor, I, 98) the sisters catch the image of their brother in a bottle and throw it upon the princess's bathing pool. When the youth turns over at home, the image turns in the water.]

[Footnote 16: The feathers of the _oo_ bird (_Moho n.o.bilis_), with which the princess's house is thatched, are the precious yellow feathers used for the manufacture of cloaks for chiefs of rank. The _mamo_ (_Drepanis pacifica_) yields feathers of a richer color, but so distributed that they can not be plucked from the living bird. This bird is therefore almost extinct in Hawaiian forests, while the _oo_ is fast recovering itself under the present strict hunting laws. Among all the royal capes preserved in the Bishop Museum, only one is made of the _mamo_ feathers.]

[Footnote 17: The reference to the temple of Pahauna is one of a number of pa.s.sages which concern themselves with antiquarian interest. In these and the transition pa.s.sages the hand of the writer is directly visible.]

[Footnote 18: The whole treatment of the Kauakahialii episode suggests an inthrust. The flute, whose playing won for the chief his first bride, plays no part at all in the wooing of Laieikawai and hence is inconsistently emphasized. Given a widely sung hero like Kauakahialii, whose flute playing is so popularly connected with his love making, and a celebrated heroine like the beauty who dwelt among the birds of Paliuli, and the story-tellers are almost certain to couple their names in a tale, confused as regards the flute, to be sure, but whose cla.s.sic character is perhaps attested by the grace of the description. The Hebraic form in which the story of the approach of the divine beauty is couched can not escape the reader, and may be compared with the advent of the Sun G.o.d later in the story. There is nothing in the content of this story to justify the idea that the chief had lost his first wife, Kailiokalauokekoa, unless it be the fact that he is searching Hawaii for another beauty. Perhaps, like the heroine of _Halemano_, the truant wife returns to her husband through jealousy of her rival's attractions. A special relation seems to exist in Hawaiian story between Kauai and the distant Puna on Hawaii, at the two extremes of the island group: it is here that _Halemano_ from Kauai weds the beauty of his dream, and it is a Kauai boy who runs the sled race with Pele in the famous myth of _Kalewalo_. With the Kauakahialii tale (found in _Hawaiian Annual_, 1907, and Paradise of the Pacific, 1911) compare Grey's New Zealand story (p. 235) of Tu Tanekai and Tiki playing the horn and the pipe to attract Hinemoa, the maiden of Rotorua. In Malo, p. 117, one of the popular stories of this chief is recorded, a tale that resembles Gill's of the spirit meeting of Watea and Papa.]

[Footnote 19: These are all wood birds, in which form Gill tells us (Myths and Songs, p. 35) the G.o.ds spoke to man in former times. Henshaw tells us that the _oo_ (_Moho n.o.bilis_) has "a long shaking note with ventriloquial powers." The _alala_ is the Hawaiian crow (_Corvus hawaiiensis_), whose note is higher than in our species. If, as Henshaw says, its range is limited to the dry Kona and Kau sections, the chief could hardly hear its note in the rainy uplands of Puna. But among the forest trees of Puna the crimson _apapane_ (_Himatione sanguinea_) still sounds its "sweet monotonous note;" the bright vermillion _iiwipolena_ (_Vectiaria coccinea_) hunts insects and trills its "sweet continual song;" the "four liquid notes" of the little rufous-patched _elepaio_ (_Eopsaltria sandvicensis_), beloved of the canoe builder, is commonly to be heard. Of the birds described in the Laielohelohe series the cluck of the _alae_ (_Gallinula sandricensis_) I have heard only in low marshes by the sea, and the _ewaewaiki_ I am unable to identify. Andrews calls it the cry of a spirit.]

[Footnote 20: _Moaulanuiakea_ means literally "Great-broad-red-c.o.c.k,"

and is the name of Moikeka's house in Tahiti, where he built the temple Lanikeha near a mountain Kapaahu. His son Kila journeys thither to fetch his older brother, and finds it "grand, majestic, lofty, thatched with the feathers of birds, battened with bird bones, timbered with _kauila_ wood." (See Fornander's _Kila_.)]

CHAPTER IV

[Footnote 21: Compare Gill's story of the first G.o.d, Watea, who dreams of a lovely woman and finds that she is Papa, of the underworld, who visits him in dreams to win him as her lover. (Myths and Songs, p. 8.)]

[Footnote 22: In the song the girl is likened to the lovely _lehua_, blossom, so common to the Puna forests, and the lover's longing to the fiery crater, Kilauea, that lies upon their edge. The wind is the carrier of the vision as it blows over the blossoming forest and scorches its wing across the flaming pit. In the _Halemano_ story the chief describes his vision as follows: "She is very beautiful. Her eyes and form are perfect. She has long, straight, black hair and she seems to be of high rank, like a princess. Her garment seems scented with the _pele_ and _mahuna_ of Kauai, her skirt is made of some very light material dyed red. She wears a _hala_ wreath on her head and a _lehua_ wreath around her neck."]