The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai

by S. N. Haleole

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 passed at least one heiau to every half mile. The classic instance in Hawaiian history is the building of the great temple of Puukohala at Kawaihae by Kamehamaha, in order to propitiate his war god, 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 constitute the days of taboo for the god Kane. Four such taboo seasons occur during the month, each lasting from two to three days and dedicated to the gods Ku, Kanaloa, 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 god 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 nobilis), 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 passages which concern themselves with antiquarian interest. In these and the transition passages 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 classic 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 god 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 gods spoke to man in former times. Henshaw tells us that the oo (Moho nobilis) 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-cock," 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.)]