Lo, the hala fruit!
The translation has to be based largely on conjecture. The author of this bit of fun-making, which is couched in old-time slang, died without making known the key to his cipher, and no one whom the present writer has met with is able to unravel its full meaning.
Footnote 213:[ (return) ] Kau-kau. Conjectural meaning to point out some one in the audience, as the marionettes often did. People were thus sometimes inveigled in behind the curtain.
Footnote 214:[ (return) ] Hala-le. Said to mean a sop, with which one took up the juice or gravy of food; a choice morsel.
Footnote 215:[ (return) ] Ku-pou. To stoop over, from devotion to one’s own pursuits, from modesty, or from shame.
Footnote 216:[ (return) ] The meaning of this line has been matter for much conjecture. The author has finally adopted the suggestion embodied in the translation here given, which is a somewhat gross reference to the woman’s physical charms.
The following mele for the hula ki’i, in language colored by the same motive, was furnished by an accomplished practitioner who had traveled far and wide in the practice of her art, having been one of a company of hula dancers that attended the Columbian exposition in Chicago. It was her good fortune also to reach the antipodes in her travels, and it was at Berlin, she says, that she witnessed for the first time the European counterpart of the hula ki’i, the “Punch and Judy” show:
Mele no ka Hula Ki’i
E le’e kau-kau, kala le’e;
E le’e kau-kau.