[Translation.]
Song
A burst of smoke from the pit lifts to the skies;
Hawaii’s beneath, birth-land of Keawe;
Malama’s beach looms before Lohian,
Where landed the chief from Kahiki,
From a voyage on the blue sea, the dark sea,
The foam-mottled sea of Kane,
What time curled waves of the king-whelming flood.
The sea up-swells, invading the land—
Lo Kane, outstretched at his ease!
Smoke and flame o’ershadow the uplands,
Conflagration by Laka, the woman
Hopoe wreathed with flowers of lehua,
Stringing the pandanus fruit.
Screw-palms that clash in Pan’-ewa—
Pan’-ewa, whose groves of lehua
Are nourished by lava shag,
Lehua that bourgeons with flame.
Night, it is night
O’er Puna and Hilo!
Night from the smoke of my land!
For the people salvation!
But the land is on fire!
The Hawaiian who furnished the meles which, in their translated forms, are designated as canto I, canto II, and so on, spoke of them as pále, and, following his nomenclature, the term has been retained, though more intimate acquaintance with the meles and with the term has shown that the nearest English synonym to correspond with pale would be the word division. Still, perhaps with a mistaken tenderness for the word, the author has retained the caption Canto, as a sort of nodding recognition of the old Hawaiian’s term—division of a poem. No idea is entertained that the five pále above given were composed by the same bard, or that they represent productions from the same individual standpoint. They do, however, breathe a spirit much in common; so that when the old Hawaiian insisted that they are so far related to one another as to form a natural series for recitation in the hula, being species of the same genus, as it were, he was not far from the truth. The man’s idea seemed to be that they were so closely related that, like beads of harmonious colors and shapes, they might be strung on the same thread without producing a dissonance.
Of these five poems, or pále (páh-lay), numbers I, II, and IV were uttered in a natural tone of voice, termed kawele, otherwise termed ko’i-honua. The purpose of this style of recitation was to adapt the tone to the necessities of the aged when their ears no longer heard distinctly. It would require an audiphone to illustrate perfectly the difference between this method of pronunciation and the ai-ha’a, which was employed in the recitation of cantos III and V. The ai-ha’a was given in a strained and guttural tone.
The poetical reciter and cantillator, whether in the halau or in the king’s court, was wont to heighten the oratorical effect of his recitation by certain crude devices, the most marked of which was that of choking the voice down, as it were, into the throat, and there letting it strain and growl like a hungry lion. This was the ai-ha’a, whose organic function was the expression of the underground passions of the soul.
