LOHIAU, THE LOVER OF A GODDESS.
THE LEGEND OF HIIAKA, THE IMMORTAL, AND THE PRINCE OF KAUAI.
I.
Of all the legends of the adventures with mortals of Pele, the dreadful goddess of the volcanoes, the most weird and dramatic is the one relating to her love for Lohiau, a prince of the island of Kauai, whose reign was probably contemporaneous with that of Kealiiokaloa, of Hawaii, during the early part of the sixteenth century. The story is not only a characteristic relic of the recklessly imaginative and highly-colored meles of the early poets, but an instructive reflex as well of the superstitions controlling the popular mind of the Hawaiian group at that period, when the forests abounded in mischievous gnomes and fairies, when the streams were guarded by nymphs and monsters, and when the very air was peopled with the spirits of the departed. But a thin veil then divided the living from the dead, the natural from the supernatural, and mortals were made the sport of the elements and the playthings of the gods.
As the mele relates, Pele and her brothers and sisters, to amuse themselves with a taste of mortal enjoyments, one day emerged from their fiery chambers in the crater of Kilauea, and went down to the coast of Puna to bathe, surf-ride, sport in the sands, and gather edible sea-weed, squid, limpets and other delicacies washed by the waves. They assumed human forms for the occasion, and therefore had human appetites.
While the others were amusing themselves in various ways—eating, laughing and sporting in the waves in the manner of mortals—Pele, in the guise of an old woman, sought repose and sleep in the shade of a hala tree. Her favorite sister was Hiiaka, her full name being Hiiaka-ika-pali-opele. She was younger than Pele, and frequently occupied the same grotto with her under the burning lake of Kilauea.
Hiiaka accompanied her sovereign sister to the shade of the hala tree, and, sitting devotedly beside her, kept her cool with a kahili. Her eyelids growing heavy, Pele instructed Hiiaka to allow her under no circumstances to be disturbed, no matter how long she might sleep, whether for hours or days, and then closed her eyes in slumber.
Scarcely had the ears of the sleeper been closed by the fingers of silence before she heard the sound of a drum—distant, but distinct and regular in its beat, as if to the impulse of music. Before leaving the crater she had heard the same sound, but paid little attention to it. Now, however, when hearing it in her dreams, her curiosity was aroused, and, assuming her spiritual form, she resolved to follow it.