If thou wert but a flower!
Footnote 87:[ (return) ] Kupukupu. Said to be a fragrant grass.
Footnote 88:[ (return) ] Kane-hoa. Said to be a hill at Kaupo, Maul. Another person says it is a hill at Lihue, on Oahu. The same name is often repeated.
Footnote 89:[ (return) ] Ho-a. To bind. An instance of word-repetition, common in Hawaiian poetry.
Footnote 90:[ (return) ] Wai-kaloa. A cool wind that Wows at Lihue, Kauai
Footnote 91:[ (return) ] Alina. A scar, or other mark of disfigurement, a moral blemish. In ancient times lovers inflicted injuries on themselves to prove devotion.
The short skirt, pa-u, was the most important piece of attire worn by the Hawaiian female. As an article of daily wear it represented many stages of evolution beyond the primitive fig-leaf, being fabricated from a great variety of materials furnished by the garden of nature. In its simplest terms the pa-ú was a mere fringe of vegetable fibers. When placed as the shield of modesty about the loins of a woman of rank, or when used as the full-dress costume of a dancing girl on a ceremonious occasion, it took on more elaborate forms, and was frequently of tapa, a fabric the finest specimens of which would not have shamed the wardrobe of an empress.
In the costuming of the hula girl the same variety obtained as in the dress of a woman of rank. Sometimes her pa-ú would be only a close-set fringe of ribbons stripped from the bark of the hibiscus (hau), the ti leaf or banana fiber, or a fine rush, strung upon a thong to encircle the waist. In its most elaborate and formal style the pa-ú consisted of a strip of fine tapa several yards long and of width to reach nearly to the knees. It was often delicately tinted or printed, as to its outer part, with stamped figures. The part of the tapa skirt thus printed, like the outer, decorative one in a set of tapa bed-sheets, was termed the kilohana.
The pa-ú worn by the danseuse, when of tapa, was often of such volume as to balloon like the skirt of a coryphée. To put it on was quite an art, and on that account, if not on the score of modesty, a portion of the halau, was screened off and devoted to the use of the females as a dressing room, being known as the unu-lau-koa, and to this place they repaired as soon as the kumu gave the signal for dressing.
The hula pa-ú of the women was worn in addition to that of daily life; the hula pa-ú of the men, a less pretentious affair, was worn outside the malo, and in addition to it.