Chapter II: Introduction (1)

This book is for the greater part a collection of Hawaiian
songs and poetic pieces that have done service from time
immemorial as the stock supply of the _hula_. The descriptive
portions have been added, not because the poetical parts
could not stand by themselves, but to furnish the proper
setting and to answer the questions of those who want to
know.

Now, the hula stood for very much to the ancient Hawaiian; it
was to him in place of our concert-hall and lecture-room, our
opera and theater, and thus became one of his chief means of
social enjoyment. Besides this, it kept the communal
imagination in living touch with the nation’s legendary past.
The hula had songs proper to itself, but it found a mine of
inexhaustible wealth in the epics and wonder-myths that
celebrated the doings of the volcano goddess Pele and her
compeers. Thus in the cantillations of the old-time hula we
find a ready-made anthology that includes every species of
composition in the whole range of Hawaiian poetry. This
epic[1] of Pele was chiefly a more or less detached series of
poems forming a story addressed not to the closet-reader, but
to the eye and ear and heart of the assembled chiefs and
people; and it was sung. The Hawaiian song, its note of joy
par excellence, was the _oli_; but it must be noted that in
every species of Hawaiian poetry, _mele_—whether epic or
eulogy or prayer, sounding through them all we shall find the
lyric note.

[Footnote 1: It might be termed a handful of lyrics strung on
an epic thread.]

The most telling record of a people’s intimate life is the
record which it unconsciously makes in its songs. This record
which the Hawaiian people have left of themselves is full and
specific. When, therefore, we ask 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 to exhaust neither the subject nor
the reader, but to answer some of the questions of the
intelligent thinker.

Thanks, many thanks, are due, first, to those native
Hawaiians who have so far broken with the old superstitious
tradition of concealment as to unearth so much of the
unwritten literary wealth stored in Hawaiian memories;
second, to those who have kindly contributed criticism,
suggestion, material at the different stages of this book’s
progress; and, lastly, to those dear friends of the author’s
youth—living or dead—whose kindness has made it possible to
send out this fledgling to the world. The author feels under
special obligations to Dr. Titus Munson Coan, of New York,
for a painstaking revision of the manuscript.

HONOLULU, HAWAII.

[Page 10][Blank]

[Page 11]

LITERATURE OF HAWAII

By NATHANIEL B. EMERSON

I.—THE HULA

One turns from the study of old genealogies, myths, and
traditions of the Hawaiians with a hungry despair at finding
in them means so small for picturing the people themselves,
their human interests and passions; but when it comes to the
hula and the whole train of feelings and sentiments that made
their entrances and exits in the _halau_ (the hall of the
hula) one perceives that in this he has found the door to the
heart of the people. So intimate and of so simple confidence
are the revelations the people make of themselves in their
songs and prattlings that when one undertakes to report what
he has heard and to translate into the terms of modern speech
what he has received in confidence, as it were, he almost
blushes, as if he had been guilty of spying on Adam and Eve
in their nuptial bower. Alas, if one could but muffle his
speech with the unconscious lisp of infancy, or veil and tone
his picture to correspond to the perspective of antiquity, he
might feel at least that, like Watteau, he had dealt
worthily, if not truly, with that ideal age which we ever
think of as the world’s garden period.

The Hawaiians, it is true, were many removes from being
primitives; their dreams, however, harked back to a period
that was close to the world’s infancy. Their remote ancestry
was, perhaps, akin to ours—Aryan, at least Asiatic—but the
orbit of their evolution seems to have led them away from the
strenuous discipline that has whipped the Anglo-Saxon branch
into fighting shape with fortune.

If one comes to the study of the hula and its songs in the
spirit of a censorious moralist he will find nothing for him;
if as a pure ethnologist, he will take pleasure in pointing
out the physical resemblances of the Hawaiian dance to the
languorous grace of the Nautch girls, of the geisha, and
other oriental dancers. But if he comes as a student and
lover of human nature, back of the sensuous posturings, in
the emotional language of the songs he will find himself
entering the playground of the human race.

The hula was a religious service, in which poetry, music,
pantomime, and the dance lent themselves, under the forms of
[Page 12] dramatic art, to the refreshment of men’s minds. Its view of
life was idyllic, and it gave itself to the celebration of
those mythical times when gods and goddesses moved on the
earth as men and women and when men and women were as gods.
As to subject-matter, its warp was spun largely from the
bowels of the old-time mythology into cords through which the
race maintained vital connection with its mysterious past.
Interwoven with these, forming the woof, were threads of a
thousand hues and of many fabrics, representing the
imaginations of the poet, the speculations of the
philosopher, the aspirations of many a thirsty soul, as well
as the ravings and flame-colored pictures of the sensualist,
the mutterings and incantations of the _kahuna_, the
mysteries and paraphernalia of Polynesian mythology, the
annals of the nation’s history—the material, in fact, which
in another nation and under different circumstances would
have gone to the making of its poetry, its drama, its opera,
its literature.

The people were superstitiously religious; one finds their
drama saturated with religious feeling, hedged about with
tabu, loaded down with prayer and sacrifice. They were
poetical; nature was full of voices for their ears; their
thoughts came to them as images; nature was to them an
allegory; all this found expression in their dramatic art.
They were musical; their drama must needs be cast in forms to
suit their ideas of rhythm, of melody, and of poetic harmony.
They were, moreover, the children of passion, sensuous,
worshipful of whatever lends itself to pleasure. How, then,
could the dramatic efforts of this primitive people, still in
the bonds of animalism, escape the note of passion? The songs
and other poetic pieces which have come down to us from the
remotest antiquity are generally inspired with a purer
sentiment and a loftier purpose than the modern; and it may
be said of them all that when they do step into the mud it is
not to tarry and wallow in it; it is rather with the
unconscious naiveté of a child thinking no evil.

On the principle of “the terminal conversion of opposites,”
which the author once heard an old philosopher expound, the
most advanced modern is better able to hark back to the
sweetness and light and music of the primeval world than the
veriest wigwam-dweller that ever chipped an arrowhead. It is
not so much what the primitive man can give us as what we can
find in him that is worth our while. The light that a Goethe,
a Thoreau, or a Kipling can project into Arcadia is mirrored
in his own nature.

If one mistakes not the temper and mind of this generation,
we are living in an age that is not content to let perish one
seed of thought or one single phase of life that can be
rescued from the drift of time. We mourn the extinction of
the buffalo of the plains and of the birds of the islands,
[Page 13] rightly thinking that life is somewhat less rich and full
without them. What of the people of the plains and of the
islands of the sea? Is their contribution so nothingless that
one can affirm that the orbit of man’s mind is complete
without it?

Comparison is unavoidable between the place held by the dance
in ancient Hawaii and that occupied by the dance in our
modern society. The ancient Hawaiians did not personally and
informally indulge in the dance for their own amusement, as
does pleasure-loving society at the present time. Like the
Shah of Persia, but for very different reasons, Hawaiians of
the old time left it to be done for them by a body of trained
and paid performers. This was not because the art and
practice of the hula were held in disrepute—quite the
reverse—but because the hula was an accomplishment requiring
special education and arduous training in both song and
dance, and more especially because it was a religious matter,
to be guarded against profanation by the observance of tabus
and the performance of priestly rites.

This fact, which we find paralleled in every form of communal
amusement, sport, and entertainment in ancient Hawaii, sheds
a strong light on the genius of the Hawaiian. We are wont to
think of the old-time Hawaiians as light-hearted children of
nature, given to spontaneous outbursts of song and dance as
the mood seized them; quite as the rustics of “merrie
England” joined hands and tripped “the light fantastic toe”
in the joyous month of May or shouted the harvest home at a
later season. The genius of the Hawaiian was different. With
him the dance was an affair of premeditation, an organized
effort, guarded by the traditions of a somber religion. And
this characteristic, with qualifications, will be found to
belong to popular Hawaiian sport and amusement of every
variety. Exception must be made, of course, of the
unorganized sports of childhood. One is almost inclined to
generalize and to say that those children of nature, as we
are wont to call them, in this regard were less free and
spontaneous than the more advanced race to which we are proud
to belong. But if the approaches to the temple of Terpsichore
with them were more guarded, we may confidently assert that
their enjoyment therein was deeper and more abandoned.

[Page 14]

II.—THE HALAU; THE KUAHU—THEIR DECORATION
AND CONSECRATION

THE HALAU

In building a halau, or hall, in which to perform the hula a
Hawaiian of the old, old time was making a temple for his
god. In later and degenerate ages almost any structure would
serve the purpose; it might be a flimsy shed or an
extemporaneous _lanai_ such as is used to shelter that _al
fresco_ entertainment, the _luau_. But in the old times of
strict tabu and rigorous etiquette, when the chief had but to
lift his hand and the entire population of a district
ransacked plain, valley, and mountain to collect the poles,
beams, thatch, and cordstuff; when the workers were so
numerous that the structure grew and took shape in a day, we
may well believe that ambitious and punctilious patrons of
the hula, such as La’a, Liloa, or Lono-i-ka-makahiki, did not
allow the divine art of Laka to house in a barn.

The choice of a site was a matter of prime importance. A
formidable code enunciated the principles governing the
selection. But—a matter of great solicitude—there were
omens to be heeded, snares and pitfalls devised by the
superstitious mind for its own entanglement. The untimely
sneeze, the ophthalmic eye, the hunched back were omens to be
shunned.

Within historic times, since the abrogation of the tabu
system and the loosening of the old polytheistic ideas, there
has been in the hula a lowering of former standards, in some
respects a degeneration. The old gods, however, were not
entirely dethroned; the people of the hula still continued to
maintain the form of divine service and still appealed to
them for good luck; but the soul of worship had exhaled; the
main study now was to make of the hula a pecuniary success.

In an important sense the old way was in sympathy with the
thought, “Except God be with the workmen, they labor in vain
that build the house.” The means for gaining divine favor and
averting the frown of the gods were those practised by all
religionists in the infantile state of the human mind—the
observance of fasts and tabus, the offering of special
prayers and sacrifices. The ceremonial purification of the
site, or of the building if it had been used for profane
purposes, was accomplished by aspersions with sea water mixed
with turmeric or red earth.
[Page 15]
When one considers the tenacious hold which all rites and
ceremonies growing out of what we are accustomed to call
superstitions had on the mind of the primitive Hawaiian, it
puzzles one to account for the entire dropping out from
modern memory of the prayers which were recited during the
erection of a hall for the shelter of an institution so
festive and so popular as the hula, while the prayers and
gloomy ritual of the temple service have survived. The
explanation may be found, perhaps, in the fact that the
priests of the temple held position by the sovereign’s
appointment; they formed a hierarchy by themselves, whereas
the position of the _kumu-hula_, who was also a priest, was
open to anyone who fitted himself for it by training and
study and by passing successfully the _ai-lolo_[2] ordeal.
After that he had the right to approach the altar of the hula
god with the prescribed offerings and to present the prayers
and petitions of the company to Laka or Kapo.

[Footnote 2: _Ai-lolo_. See pp. 32, 34, 36.]

In pleasing contrast to the worship of the _heiau_, the
service of the hula was not marred by the presence of
groaning victims and bloody sacrifices. Instead we find the
offerings to have been mostly rustic tokens, things entirely
consistent with light-heartedness, joy, and ecstasy of
devotion, as if to celebrate the fact that heaven had come
down to earth and Pan, with all the nymphs, was dancing.

During the time the halau was building the tabus and rules
that regulated conduct were enforced with the utmost
strictness. The members of the company were required to
maintain the greatest propriety of demeanor, to suppress all
rudeness of speech and manner, to abstain from all carnal
indulgence, to deny themselves specified articles of food,
and above all to avoid contact with a corpse. If anyone, even
by accident, suffered such defilement, before being received
again into fellowship or permitted to enter the halau and
take part in the exercises he must have ceremonial cleansing
(_huikala_). The _kumu_ offered up prayers, sprinkled the
offender with salt water and turmeric, commanded him to bathe
in the ocean, and he was clean. If the breach of discipline
was gross and willful, an act of outrageous violence or the
neglect of tabu, the offender could be restored only after
penitence and confession.

THE KUAHU

In every halau stood the _kuahu_, or altar, as the visible
temporary abode of the deity, whose presence was at once the
inspiration of the performance and the luck-bringer of the
enterprise—a rustic frame embowered in greenery. The
gathering of the green leaves and other sweet finery of
[Page 16] nature for its construction and decoration was a matter of so
great importance that it could not be intrusted to any chance
assemblage of wild youth who might see fit to take the work
in hand. There were formalities that must be observed, songs
to be chanted, prayers to be recited. It was necessary to
bear in mind that when one deflowered the woods of their
fronds of _íe-íe_ and fern or tore the trailing lengths of
_maile_—albeit in honor of Laka herself—the body of the
goddess was being despoiled, and the despoiling must be done
with all tactful grace and etiquette.

It must not be gathered from this that the occasion was made
solemn and oppressive with weight of ceremony, as when a
temple was erected or as when a tabu chief walked abroad, and
all men lay with their mouths in the dust. On the contrary,
it was a time of joy and decorous exultation, a time when in
prayer-songs and ascriptions of praise the poet ransacked all
nature for figures and allusions to be used in caressing the
deity.

The following adulatory prayer (_kánaenáe_) in adoration of
Laka was recited while gathering the woodland decorations for
the altar. It is worthy of preservation for its intrinsic
beauty, for the spirit of trustfulness it breathes. We remark
the petitions it utters for the growth of tree and shrub, as
if Laka had been the alma mater under whose influence all
nature budded and rejoiced.

It would seem as if the physical ecstasy of the dance and the
sensuous joy of all nature’s finery had breathed their spirit
into the aspiration and that the beauty of leaf and flower,
all of them familiar forms of the god’s
metamorphosis—accessible to their touch and for the
regalement of their senses—had brought such nearness and
dearness, of affection between goddess and worshiper that all
fear was removed.

_He kánaenáe no Laka_

A ke kua-hiwi, i ke kua-lono,
Ku ana o Laka i ka mauna;
Noho ana o Laka i ke po’o o ka ohu.
O Laka kumu hula,
5 Nana i a’e ka wao-kele,[3]
Kahi, kahi i moli’a i ka pua’a,
I ke po’o pua’a,
He pua’a hiwa na Kane.[4]
[Page 17] He kane na Laka,
10 Na ka wahine i oni a kelakela i ka lani:
I kupu ke a’a i ke kumu,
I lau a puka ka mu’o,
Ka liko, ka ao i-luna.
Kupu ka lala, hua ma ka Hikina;
15 Kupu ka laau ona a Maka-li’i,[5]
O Maka-lei,[6] laau kaulana mai ka Po mai.[7]
Mai ka Po mai ka oiaio—
I ho-i’o i-luna, i o’o i-luna.
He luna au e ki’i mai nei ia oe, e Laka,
20 E ho’i ke ko-kua[8] pa-ú;
He la uniki[9] e no kaua;
Ha-ike-ike[10] o ke Akua;
Hoike ka mana o ka Wahine,
O Laka, kaikuahine,
25 Wahine a Lono i ka ou-alii.[11]
E Lono, e hu’[12] ia mai ka lani me ka honua.
Nou okoa Kukulu o Kahiki.[13]
Me ke ano-ai[14] i aloha, e!
E ola, e!

[Footnote 3: _Wao-kele_. That portion of the mountain forest
where grew the monarch trees was called _wao-kele_ or
_wao-maukele_.]

[Footnote 4: _Na Kane_. Why was the offering, the black roast
porkling, said to be for Kane, who was not a special patron,
_au-makúa_, of the hula? The only answer the author has been
able to obtain from any Hawaiian is that, though Kane was not
a god of the hula, he was a near relative. On reflection, the
author can see a propriety in devoting the reeking flesh of
the swine to god Kane, while to the sylvan deity, Lâkâ,
goddess of the peaceful hula, were devoted the rustic
offerings that were the embodiment of her charms. Her image,
or token—an uncarved block of wood—was set up in a
prominent part of the _kuahu_, and at the close of a
performance the wreaths that had been worn by the actors were
draped about the image. Thus viewed, there is a delicate
propriety and significance in such disposal of the pig.]

[Footnote 5: _Maka-li’i_ (Small eyes). The Pleiades; also the
period of six months, including the rainy season, that began
some time in October or November and was reckoned from the
date when the Pleiades appeared in the East at sunset.
_Maka-li’i_ was also the name of a month, by some reckoned as
the first month of the year.]

[Footnote 6: _Maka-léi_. The name of a famous mythological
tree which had the power of attracting fish. It did not
poison, but only bewitched or fascinated them. There were two
trees bearing this name, one a male, the other a female,
which both grew at a place in Hilo called Pali-uli. One of
these, the female, was, according to tradition, carried from
its root home to the fish ponds in Kailua, Oahu, for the
purpose of attracting fish to the neighboring waters. The
enterprise was eminently successful.]

[Footnote 7: _Po_. Literally night; the period in cosmogony
when darkness and chaos reigned, before the affairs on earth
had become settled under the rule of the gods. Here the word
is used to indicate a period of remote mythologic antiquity.
The use of the word _Po_ in the following verse reminds one
of the French adage, “La nuit porte conseil.”]

[Footnote 8: _Kokúa_. Another form for _kakúa_, to gird on
the _pa-ú_. (See _Pa-ú_ song, pp. 51–53.)]

[Footnote 9: _Uníki_. A word not given in the dictionary. The
debut of an actor at the hula, after passing the _ai-lolo_
test and graduating from the school of the halau, a critical
event.]

[Footnote 10: _Ha-íke-íke_. Equivalent to _ho-íke-íke_, an
exhibition, to exhibit.]

[Footnote 11: _Ou-alii_. The Hawaiians seem to have lost the
meaning of this word. The author has been at some pains to
work it out somewhat conjecturally.]

[Footnote 12: _E Lono, e hu’ ia, mai, etc_. The unelided form
of the word _hu’_ would be _hui_. The final _i_ is dropped
before the similar vowel of _ia_.]

[Footnote 13: _Kukúlu o Kahíki_. The pillars of Kahiki. The
ancient Hawaiians supposed the starry heavens to be a solid
dome supported by a wall or vertical
construction—_kukulu_—set up along the horizon. That
section of the wall that stood over against Kahiki they
termed _Kukulu o Kahiki_. Our geographical name Tahiti is of
course from Kahiki, though it does not apply to the same
region. After the close of what has been termed “the period
of intercourse,” which, came probably during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and during which the ancient Hawaiians
voyaged to and fro between Hawaii and the lands of the South,
geographical ideas became hazy and the term _Kahiki_ came to
be applied to any foreign country.]

[Footnote 14: _Áno-ái_. An old form of salutation, answering
in general to the more modern word aloha, much used at the
present time. _Ano-ai_ seems to have had a shade of meaning
more nearly answering to our word “welcome.” This is the
first instance the author has met with of its use in poetry.]

[Page 18]
[Translation.]

_A Prayer of Adulation to Laka_

In the forests, on the ridges
Of the mountains stands Laka;
Dwelling in the source of the mists.
Laka, mistress of the hula,
5 Has climbed the wooded haunts of the gods,
Altars hallowed by the sacrificial swine,
The head of the boar, the black boar of Kane.
A partner he with Laka;
Woman, she by strife gained rank in heaven.
10 That the root may grow from the stem,
That the young shoot may put forth and leaf,
Pushing up the fresh enfolded bud,
The scion-thrust bud and fruit toward the East,
Like the tree that bewitches the winter fish,
15 Maka-lei, tree famed from the age of night.
Truth is the counsel of night—
May it fruit and ripen above.
A messenger I bring you, O Laka,
To the girding of paû.
20 An opening festa this for thee and me;
To show the might of the god,
The power of the goddess,
Of Laka, the sister,
To Lono a wife in the heavenly courts.
25 O Lono, join heaven and earth!
Thine alone are the pillars of Kahiki.
Warm greeting, beloved one,
We hail thee!

The cult of god Lono was milder, more humane, than that of
Kane and the other major gods. No human sacrifices were
offered on his altars.—The statement in verse 26 accords
with the general belief of the Hawaiians that Lono dwelt in
foreign parts, _Kukulu o Kahiki_, and that he would some time
come to them from across the waters. When Captain Cook
arrived in his ships, the Hawaiians worshiped him as the god
Lono.

The following song-prayer also is one that was used at the
gathering of the greenery in the mountains and during the
building of the altar in the halau. When recited in the halau
all the pupils took part, and the chorus was a response in
which the whole assembly in the halau were expected to join:

_Pule Kuahu no Laka_

Haki pu o ka nahelehele,
Haki hana maile o ka wao,
[Page 19] Hooulu[15] lei ou, o Laka, e!
O Hiiaka[16] ke kaula nana e hooulu na ma’i,
5 A aeae a ulu[17] a noho i kou kuahu,
Eia ka pule la, he pule ola,
He noi ola nou, e-e!

_Chorus:_
E ola ia makou, aohe hala!

[Translation.]

_Altar-Prayer to Laka_

This spoil and rape of the wildwood,
This plucking of wilderness maile—
Collect of garlands, Laka, for you.
Hiiaka, the prophet, heals our diseases.
5 Enter, possess, inspire your altar;
Heed our prayer, ’tis for life;
Our petition to you is for life.

_Chorus:_

Give us life, save from transgression!

[Footnote 15: _Hoo-ulu_. This word has a considerable range of
meaning, well illustrated in this mele. In its simplest form,
_ulu_, it means to grow, to become strong. Joined with the
causative _hoo_, as here, it takes on the spiritual meaning
of causing to prosper, of inspiring. The word “collect,” used
in the translation, has been chosen to express the double
sense of gathering the garlands and of devoting them to the
goddess as a religious offering. In the fourth verse this
word, _hooulu_, is used in the sense of to heal. Compare note
_c_.]

[Footnote 16: _Hiiaka_. The youngest sister of Pele, often
spoken of as _Hiiaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele_,
Hiiaka-of-the-bosom-of-Pele. Why she should be spoken of as
capable of healing diseases is not at all clear.]

[Footnote 17: _Ulu_. Here we have the word _ulu_ in its
simple, uncombined form, meaning to enter into and inspire.]

The wildwoods of Hawaii furnished in great abundance and
variety small poles for the framework of the kuahu, the
altar, the holy place of the halau, and sweet-scented leaves
and flowers suitable for its decoration. A spirit of fitness,
however, limited choice among these to certain species that
were deemed acceptable to the goddess because they were
reckoned as among her favorite forms of metamorphosis. To go
outside this ordained and traditional range would have been
an offense, a sacrilege. This critical spirit would have
looked with the greatest disfavor on the practice that in
modern times has crept in, of bedecking the dancers with
garlands of roses, pinks, jessamine, and other nonindigenous
flowers, as being utterly repugnant to the traditional spirit
of the hula.

Among decorations approved and most highly esteemed stood
pre-eminent the fragrant maile (pl. IV) and the star-like
fronds and ruddy drupe of the _íe-íe_ (pl. II) and its
kindred, the _hála-pépe_ (pl. III); the scarlet pompons of
the _lehúa_ (pl. XIII) and _ohi’a_, with the fruit of the
latter (the mountain-apple); many varieties of fern,
including that splendid parasite, the “bird’s nest fern”
[Page 20] (_ekáha_), hailed by the Hawaiians as Mawi’s paddle; to which
must be added the commoner leaves and lemon-colored flowers
of the native hibiscus, the _hau_, the breadfruit, the native
banana and the dracæna (_ti_), plate V; and lastly, richest
of all, in the color that became Hawaii’s favorite, the royal
yellow _ilíma_ (pl. VI), a flower familiar to the eyes of the
tourist to Honolulu.

While deft hands are building and weaving the light framework
of the kuahu, binding its parts with strong vines and
decorating it with nature’s sumptuous embroidery, the _kumu_,
or teacher, under the inspiration of the deity, for whose
residence he has prepared himself by long vigil and fasting
with fleshly abstinence, having spent the previous night
alone in the halau, is chanting or cantillating his adulatory
prayers, _kanaenae_—songs of praise they seem to be—to the
glorification of the gods and goddesses who are invited to
bless the occasion with their presence and inspiration, but
especially of that one, Laka, whose bodily presence is
symbolized by a rude block of wood arrayed in yellow tapa
that is set up on the altar itself. Thus does the kumu sing:

_Pule Kuahu_

Ei’ au e Laka mai uka,
E Laka mai kai;
O hooulu
O ka ilio[18] nana e hae,
5 O ka maile hihi i ka wao,
O ka lau-ki[19] lei o ke akua,
O na ku’i hauoli
O Ha’i-ka-manawa.[20]
O Laka oe,
10 O ke akua i ke kuahu nei, la;
E ho’i, ho’i mai a noho i kou kuahu!

[Translation.]

_Altar-Prayer_ (to Laka)

Here am I, oh Laka from the mountains,
Oh Laka from the shore;
Protect us
Against the dog that barks;

[Page 21] 5 Reside in the wild-twining maile
And the goddess-enwreathing ti.
All, the joyful pulses.
Of the woman Ha’i-ka-manawa!
Thou art Laka,
10 The god of this altar;
Return, return, abide in thy shrine!

[Footnote 18: _Ilio nana e hae_. The barking of a dog, the
crowing of a cock, the grunting of a pig, the hooting of an
owl, or any such sound occurring at the time of a religious
solemnity, _aha_, broke the spell of the incantation and
vitiated the ceremony. Such an untimely accident was as much
deprecated as were the Turk, the Comet, and the Devil by
pious Christian souls during the Middle Ages.]

[Footnote 19: _Lau-ki_. The leaf of the _ti_ plant—the
same as the _ki_—(Dracæna terminalis), much used as an emblem
of divine power, a charm or defense against malign spiritual
influences. The kahuna often wore about his neck a fillet of
this leaf. The _ti_ leaf was a special emblem of Ha’i-wahine,
or of Li’a-wahine. It was much used as a decoration about the
halau.]

[Footnote 20: _Ha’i-ka-manawa_. It is conjectured that this is
the same as Ha’i-wahine. She was a mythological character,
about whom there is a long and tragic story.]

The prayers which the hula folk of old times chanted while
gathering the material in the woods or while weaving it into
shape in the halau for the construction of a shrine did not
form a rigid liturgy; they formed rather a repertory as
elastic as the sighing of the breeze, or the songs of the
birds whose notes embroidered the pure mountain air. There
were many altar-prayers, so that if a prayer came to an end
before the work was done the priest had but to begin the
recitation of another prayer, or, if the spirit of the
occasion so moved him, he would take up again a prayer
already repeated, for until the work was entirely
accomplished the voice of prayer must continue to be heard.

The _pule_ now to be given seems to be specially suited to
that portion of the service which took place in the woods at
the gathering of the poles and greenery. It was designed
specially for the placating of the little god-folk who from
their number were addressed as _Kini o ke Akua_, the
multitude of the little gods, and who were the counterparts
in old Hawaii of our brownies, elfins, sprites, kobolds,
gnomes, and other woodland imps. These creatures, though
dwarfish and insignificant in person, were in such
numbers—four thousand, forty thousand, four hundred
thousand—and were so impatient of any invasion of their
territory, so jealous of their prerogatives, so spiteful and
revengeful when injured, that it was policy always to keep on
the right side of them.

_Pule Kuahu_

E hooulu ana I Kini[21] o ke Akua,
Ka lehu o ke Akua,
Ka mano o ke Akua,
I ka pu-ku’i o ke Akua,
5 I ka lalani Akua,
Ia ulu mai o Kane,
Ulu o Kanaloa;
Ulu ka ohia, lau ka ie-ie;
Ulu ke Akua, noho i ke kahua,
10 A a’ea’e, a ulu, a noho kou kuahu.
Eia ka pule la, he pule ola.

_Chorus:_

E ola ana oe!

[Footnote 21: _Kini o ke Akua._ See note _d_, p. 24.]

[Page 22]

[Translation.]

_Altar-Prayer_

Invoke we now the four thousand,
The myriads four of the nimble,
The four hundred thousand elves,
The countless host of sprites,
5 Rank upon rank of woodland gods.
Pray, Kane, also inspire us;
Kanaloa, too, join the assembly.
Now grows the _ohi’a_, now leafs _ie-ie_;
God enters, resides in the place;
10 He mounts, inspires, abides in the shrine.
This is our prayer, our plea this for life!

_Chorus:_

Life shall be thine!

From one point of view these _pule_ are not to be regarded as
prayers in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather as
song-offerings, verbal bouquets, affectionate sacrifices to
the gods.

[Page 23]

III.—THE GODS OF THE HULA.

Of what nature were the gods of the old times, and how did
the ancient Hawaiians conceive of them? As of beings having
the form, the powers, and the passions of humanity, yet
standing above and somewhat apart from men. One sees, as
through a mist, darkly, a figure, standing, moving; in shape
a plant, a tree or vine-clad stump, a bird, a taloned
monster, a rock carved by the fire-queen, a human form, a
puff of vapor—and now it has given place to vacancy. It was
a goddess, perhaps of the hula. In the solitude of the
wilderness one meets a youthful being of pleasing address, of
godlike wit, of elusive beauty; the charm of her countenance
unspoken authority, her gesture command. She seems one with
nature, yet commanding it. Food placed before her remains
untasted; the oven, _imu_,[22] in which the fascinated host
has heaped his abundance, preparing for a feast, when opened
is found empty; the guest of an hour has disappeared. Again
it was a goddess, perhaps of the hula. Or, again, a traveler
meets a creature of divine beauty, all smiles and loveliness.
The infatuated mortal, smitten with hopeless passion, offers
blandishments; he finds himself by the roadside embracing a
rock. It was a goddess of the hula.

The gods, great and small, superior and inferior, whom the
devotees and practitioners of the hula worshiped and sought
to placate were many; but the goddess Laka was the one to
whom they offered special prayers and sacrifices and to whom
they looked as the patron, the _au-makua_,[23] of that
institution. It was for her benefit and in her honor that the
kuahu was set up, and the wealth of flower and leaf used in
its decoration was emblematic of her beauty and glory, a
pledge of her bodily presence, the very forms that she, a
sylvan deity, was wont to assume when she pleased to manifest
herself.

As an additional crutch to the imagination and to emphasize
the fact of her real presence on the altar which she had been
invoked to occupy as her abode, she was symbolized by an
uncarved block of wood from the sacred _lama_[24] tree. This
was wrapped in a robe of choice yellow tapa, scented with
turmeric, and set conspicuously upon the altar.

[Footnote 22: _Imu_. The Hawaiian oven, which was a hole in
the ground lined and arched over with stones.]

[Footnote 23: _Au-makua_. An ancestral god.]

[Footnote 24: _Lama_. A beautiful tree having firm,
fine-grained, white wood; used in making sacred inclosures
and for other tabu purposes.]
[Page 24]
Laka was invoked as the god of the maile, the ie-ie, and
other wildwood growths before mentioned (pl. II). She was
hailed as the “sister, wife, of god Lono,” as “the one who by
striving attained favor with the gods of the upper ether;” as
“the kumu[25] hula”—head teacher of the Terpsichorean art;
“the fount of joy;” “the prophet who brings health to the
sick;” “the one whose presence gives life.” In one of the
prayers to Laka she is besought to come and take possession
of the worshiper, to dwell in him as in a temple, to inspire
him in all his parts and faculties—voice, hands, feet, the
whole body.

Laka seems to have been a friend, but not a relative, of the
numerous Pele family. So far as the author has observed, the
fiery goddess is never invited to grace the altar with her
presence, nor is her name so much as mentioned in any prayer
met with.

To compare the gods of the Hawaiian pantheon with those of
classic Greece, the sphere occupied by Laka corresponds most
nearly to that filled by Terpsichore and Euterpe, the muses,
respectively, of dance and of song. Lono, in one song spoken
of as the husband of Laka, had features in common with
Apollo.

That other gods, Kane, Ku, Kanaloa,[26] with Lono,
Ku-pulupulu,[27] and the whole swarm of godlings that peopled
the wildwood, were also invited to favor the performances
with their presence can be satisfactorily explained on the
ground, first, that all the gods were in a sense members of
one family, related to each other by intermarriage, if not by
the ties of kinship; and, second, by the patent fact of that
great underlying cause of bitterness and strife among
immortals as well as mortals, jealousy. It would have been an
eruptive occasion of heart-burning and scandal if by any
mischance a privileged one should have had occasion to feel
slighted; and to have failed in courtesy to that countless
host of wilderness imps and godlings, the _Kini Akua_,[28]
mischievous and irreverent as the monkeys of India, would
indeed have been to tempt a disaster.

While it is true that the testimony of the various
_kumu-hula_, teachers of the hula, and devotees of the art of
the hula, so far as the author has talked with them, has been
overwhelmingly to the effect that Laka was the one and only
divine patron of the art known to them, there has been a
small number equally ready to assert that there were those
who observed the cult of the goddess Kapo and worshiped her
[Page 25] as the patron of the hula. The positive testimony of these
witnesses must be reckoned as of more weight than the
negative testimony of a much larger number, who either have
not seen or will not look at the other side of the shield. At
any rate, among the prayers before the kuahu, of which there
are others yet to be presented, will be found several
addressed to Kapo as the divine patron of the hula.

[Footnote 25: The teacher, a leader and priest of the hula.
The modern school-master is called _kumu-kula_.]

[Footnote 26: _Kanaloa_. Kane, Ku, Kanaloa, and Lono were the
major gods of the Hawaiian pantheon.]

[Footnote 27: _Ku-pulupulu_. A god of the canoe-makers.]

[Footnote 28: _Kini Akua_. A general expression—often used
together with the ones that follow—meaning the countless
swarms of brownies, elfs, kobolds, sprites, and other
godlings (mischievous imps) that peopled the wilderness.
_Kini_ means literally 40,000, _lehu_ 400,000, and _mano_
4,000. See the _Pule Kuahu_—altar-prayer—on page 21. The
Hawaiians, curiously enough, did not put the words _mano_,
_kini_, and _lehu_ in the order of their numerical value.]

Kapo was sister of Pele and the daughter of Haumea.[29] Among
other roles played by her, like Laka she was at times a
sylvan deity, and it was in the garb of woodland
representations that she was worshiped by hula folk. Her
forms of activity, corresponding to her different
metamorphoses, were numerous, in one of which she was at
times “employed by the _kahuna_[30] as a messenger in their
black arts, and she is claimed by many as an _aumakua_,” [31]
said to be the sister of Kalai-pahoa, the poison god.

[Footnote 29: _Haumea_. The ancient goddess, or ancestor, the
sixth in line of descent from Wakea.]

[Footnote 30: _Kahuna._ A sorcerer; with a qualifying
adjective it meant a skilled craftsman; _Kahuna-kalai-wa’a_
was a canoe-builder; _kahuna lapaau_ was a medicine-man, a
doctor, etc.]

[Footnote 31: The Lesser Gods of Hawaii, a paper by Joseph S.
Emerson, read before the Hawaiian Historical Society, April
7, 1892.]

Unfortunately Kapo had an evil name on account of a
propensity which led her at times to commit actions that seem
worthy only of a demon of lewdness. This was, however, only
the hysteria of a moment, not the settled habit of her life.
On one notable occasion, by diverting the attention of the
bestial pig-god Kama-pua’a, and by vividly presenting to him
a temptation well adapted to his gross nature, she succeeded
in enticing him away at a critical moment, and thus rescued
her sister Pele at a time when the latter’s life was
imperiled by an unclean and violent assault from the
swine-god.

Like Catherine of Russia, who in one mood was the patron of
literature and of the arts and sciences and in another mood a
very satyr, so the Hawaiian goddess Kapo seems to have lived
a double life whose aims were at cross purposes with one
another—now an angel of grace and beauty, now a demon of
darkness and lust.

Do we not find in this the counterpart of nature’s twofold
aspect, who presents herself to dependent humanity at one
time as an alma mater, the food-giver, a divinity of joy and
comfort, at another time as the demon of the storm and
earthquake, a plowshare of fiery destruction?

The name of Hiiaka, the sister of Pele, is one often
mentioned in the prayers of the hula.
[Page 26]

IV.—SUPPORT AND ORGANIZATION OF THE HULA

In ancient times the hula to a large extent was a creature of
royal support, and for good reason. The actors in this
institution were not producers of life’s necessaries. To the
_alii_ belonged the land and the sea and all the useful
products thereof. Even the jetsam whale-tooth and wreckage
scraps of iron that ocean cast up on the shore were claimed
by the lord of the land. Everything was the king’s. Thus it
followed of necessity that the support of the hula must in
the end rest upon the alii. As in ancient Rome it was a
senator or general, enriched by the spoil of a province, who
promoted the sports of the arena, so in ancient Hawaii it was
the chief or headman of the district who took the initiative
in the promotion of the people’s communistic sports and of
the hula.

We must not imagine that the hula was a thing only of kings’
courts and chiefish residences. It had another and democratic
side. The passion for the hula was broadspread. If other
agencies failed to meet the demand, there was nothing to
prevent a company of enthusiasts from joining themselves
together in the pleasures and, it might be, the profits of
the hula. Their spokesman—designated as the _po’o-puaa_,
from the fact that a pig, or a boar’s head, was required of
him as an offering at the kuahu—was authorized to secure the
services of some expert to be their kumu. But with the hula
all roads lead to the king’s court.

Let us imagine a scene at the king’s residence. The alii,
rousing from his sloth and rubbing his eyes, rheumy with
debauch and _awa_, overhears remark on the doings of a new
company of hula dancers who have come into the neighborhood.
He summons his chief steward.

“What is this new thing of which they babble?” he demands.

“It is nothing, son of heaven,” answers the kneeling steward.

“They spoke of a hula. Tell me, what is it?”

“Ah, thou heaven-born (_lani_), it was but a trifle—a new
company, young graduates of the halau, have set themselves up
as great ones; mere rustics; they have no proper acquaintance
with the traditions of the art as taught by the bards of...
your majesty’s father. They mouth and twist the old songs
all awry, thou son of heaven.”

“Enough. I will hear them to-morrow. Send a messenger for
this new kumu. Fill again my bowl with awa.”
[Page 27]
Thus it comes about that the new hula company gains audience
at court and walks the road that, perchance, leads to
fortune. Success to the men and women of the hula means not
merely applause, in return for the incense of flattery; it
means also a shower of substantial favors—food, garments,
the smile of royalty, perhaps land—things that make life a
festival. If welcome grows cold and it becomes evident that
the harvest has been reaped, they move on to fresh woods and
pastures new.

To return from this apparent digression, it was at the king’s
court—if we may extend the courtesy of this phrase to a
group of thatched houses—that were gathered the bards and
those skilled in song, those in whose memories were stored
the mythologies, traditions, genealogies, proverbial wisdom,
and poetry that, warmed by emotion, was the stuff from which
was spun the songs of the hula. As fire is produced by
friction, so it was often by the congress of wits rather than
by the flashing of genius that the songs of the hula were
evolved.

The composition and criticism of a poetical passage were a
matter of high importance, often requiring many suggestions
and much consultation. If the poem was to be a _mele-inoa_, a
name-song to eulogize some royal or princely scion, it must
contain no word of ill-omen. The fate-compelling power of
such a word, once shot from the mouth, was beyond recall.
Like the incantation of the sorcerer, the _kahuna ánaaná_, it
meant death to the eulogized one. If not, it recoiled on the
life of the singer.

The verbal form once settled, it remained only to stereotype
it on the memories of the men and women who constituted the
literary court or conclave. Think not that only thus were
poems produced in ancient Hawaii. The great majority of songs
were probably the fruit of solitary inspiration, in which the
bard poured out his heart like a song-bird, or uttered his
lone vision as a seer. The method of poem production in
conclave may be termed the official method. It was often done
at the command of an alii. So much for the fabrication, the
weaving, of a song.

If the composition was intended as a eulogy, it was
cantillated ceremoniously before the one it honored; if in
anticipation of a prince yet unborn, it was daily recited
before the mother until the hour of her delivery; and this
cantillation published it abroad. If the song was for
production in the hula, it lay warm in the mind of the kumu,
the master and teacher of the hula, until such time as he had
organized his company.

The court of the alii was a vortex that drew in not only the
bards and men of lore, but the gay and fashionable rout of
pleasure-seekers, the young men and women of shapely form and
gracious presence, the sons and daughters of the king’s
[Page 28] henchmen and favorites; among them, perhaps, the offspring of
the king’s morganatic alliances and amours—the flower and
pick of Hawaii’s youth. From these the kumu selected those
most fitted by beauty and grace of form, as well as quickness
of wit and liveliness of imagination, to take part in the
hula.

The performers in the hula were divided into two classes, the
_olapa_—agile ones—and the _ho’o-paa_—steadfast ones. The
rôle of olapa, as was fitting, was assigned to the young men
and young women who could best illustrate in their persons
the grace and beauty of the human form. It was theirs,
sometimes while singing, to move and pose and gesture in the
dance; sometimes also to punctuate their song and action with
the lighter instruments of music. The rôle of ho’o-paa, on
the other hand, was given to men and women of greater
experience and of more maturity. They handled the heavier
instruments and played their parts mostly while sitting or
kneeling, marking the time with their instrumentation. They
also lent their voices to swell the chorus or utter the
refrain of certain songs, sometimes taking the lead in the
song or bearing its whole burden, while the light-footed
olapa gave themselves entirely to the dance. The part of the
ho’o-paa was indeed the heavier, the more exacting duty.

Such was the personnel of a hula troupe when first gathered
by the hula-master for training and drill in the halau, now
become a school for the hula. Among the pupils the kumu was
sure to find some old hands at the business, whose presence,
like that of veterans in a squad of recruits, was a leaven to
inspire the whole company with due respect for the spirit and
traditions of the historic institution and to breed in the
members the patience necessary to bring them to the highest
proficiency.

The instruction of the kumu, as we are informed, took a wide
range. It dealt in elaborate detail on such matters as
accent, inflection, and all that concerns utterance and
vocalization. It naturally paid great attention to gesture
and pose, attitude and bodily action. That it included
comment on the meaning that lay back of the words may be
gravely doubted. The average hula dancer of modern times
shows great ignorance of the mele he recites, and this is
true even of the kumu-hula. His work too often is largely
perfunctory, a matter of sound and form, without appeal to
the intellect.