My friend in the rain and the wind,
My friend in the heat and the sun,
My friend in the cold from the mountain,
My friend in the storm,
My friend in the calm,
My friend in the eight seas.
Alas! alas! gone is my friend,
And no more will return!’
“Other exhibitions of a similar kind I witnessed at Mani. After the death of Keopuolani we frequently saw the inhabitants of a whole district that had belonged to her coming to weep on account of her death. They walked in profound silence, either in single file or two or three abreast, the old people leading the van and the children bringing up the rear. They were not covered with ashes, but almost literally clothed in sackcloth. No ornament, or even decent piece of cloth, was seen on any one. Dressed only in old fishing nets, dirty and torn pieces of matting, or tattered garments, and these sometimes tied on their bodies with pieces of old canoe ropes, they appeared the most abject and wretched of human beings I ever saw. When they were within a few hundred yards of the house where the corpse was lying they began to lament and wail. The crowds of mourners around the house opened a passage for them to approach it, and then one or two of their number came forward and, standing a little before the rest, began a song or recitation, showing her birth, rank, honours, and virtues, brandishing a staff or piece of sugar-cane, and accompanying their recitation with attitudes and gestures, expressive of the most frantic grief. When they had finished they sat down and mingled with the thronging multitudes in their loud and ceaseless wailing.”
Though these ceremonies were so popular, and almost universal, on the decease of their chiefs, they do not appear to have been practised by the common people among themselves. The wife did not knock out her teeth on the death of her husband, nor the son his when he lost his father or mother, neither did parents thus express their grief when bereaved of an only child. Sometimes they cut their hair, but in general only indulged in lamentations and weeping for several days.