The Hawaiian language was one of hospitality and invitation. The expression mai, or komo mai, this way, or come in, was the most common of salutations. The Hawaiian sat down to meat before an open door; he ate his food in the sight of all men, and it was only one who dared being denounced as a churl who would fail to invite with word and gesture the passer-by to come in and share with him. This gesture might be a sweeping, downward, or sidewise motion of the hand in which the palm faced and drew toward the speaker. This seems to have been the usual form when the two parties were near to each other; if they were separated by any considerable distance, the fingers would perhaps more likely be turned upward, thus making the signal more distinctly visible and at the same time more emphatic.
In the expression of unvoiced assent and dissent the Hawaiian practised refinements that went beyond our ordinary conventions. To give assent he did not find it necessary so much as to nod the head; a lifting of the eyebrows sufficed. On the other hand, the expression of dissent was no less simple as well as decisive, being attained by a mere grimace of the nose. This manner of indicating dissent was not, perhaps, without some admixture of disdain or even scorn; but that feeling, if predominant, would call for a reenforcement of the gesture by some additional token, such as a pouting of the lips accompanied by an upward toss of the chin. A more impersonal and coldly businesslike way of manifesting a negative was by an outward sweep of the hand, the back of the hand being turned to the applicant. Such a gesture, when addressed to a huckster or a beggar—a rare bird, by the way, in old Hawaii—was accepted as final.
There was another method of signifying a most emphatic, even contemptuous, no. In this the tongue is protruded and allowed to hang down flat and wide like the flaming banner of a panting hound. A friend states that the Maoris made great use of gestures with the tongue in their dances, especially in the war-dance, sometimes letting it hang down broad, flat, and long, directly in front, sometimes curving it to right or left, and sometimes stuffing it into the hollow of the cheek and puffing out one side of the face. This manner—these methods it might be said—of facial expression, so far as observed and so far as can be learned, were chiefly of feminine practice. The very last gesture—that of the protruded tongue—is not mentioned as one likely to be employed on the stage in the halau, certainly not in the performance of what one would call the serious hulas. But it might well have been employed in the hula ki’i (see p. 91), which was devoted, as we have seen, to the portrayal of the lighter and more comic aspects of daily life.
It is somewhat difficult to interpret the meaning of the various attitudes and movements of the feet and legs. Their remoteness from the centers of emotional control, their detachment from the vortices of excitement, and their seeming restriction to mechanical functions make them seem but slightly sympathetic with those tides of emotion that speed through the vital parts of the frame. But, though somewhat aloof from, they are still under the dominion of, the same emotional laws that govern the more central parts.
Man is all sympathy one part with another;
For head with, heart hath joyful amity,
And both with moon and tides.
The illustrations brought to illuminate this division of the subject will necessarily be of the most general application and will seem to belong rather to the domain of oratory than to that of dramatic or stage expression, by which is meant expression fitted for the purposes of the halau.