How Ma-ui won fire for Men.
Ma-ui’s mother must have known about fire and the use of fire; else why should she have been called Hina-of-the-Fire, and how did it come that her birds, the alae, knew where fire was hidden and how to make it blaze up? Hina must have known about fire. But her son had to search and search for fire. The people who lived in houses on the Islands did not know of it: they had to eat raw roots and raw fish, and they had to suffer the cold. It was for them that Ma-ui wanted to get fire; it was for them that he went down to the lower world, and that he went searching through the upper world for it.
In Kahiki-mo-e they have a tale about Ma-ui that the Hawaiians do not know. There they tell how he went down to the lower world and sought out his great-great-grandmother, Ma-hui’a. She was glad to see Ma-ui, of whom she had heard in the lower world; and when he asked her to give him fire to take to the upper world, she plucked a nail off her finger and gave it to him.
In this nail, fire burned. Ma-ui went to the upper world with it. But in crossing a stream of water he let the nail drop into it. And so he lost the fire that his great-great-grandmother had given him.
He went back to her again. And again Ma-hui’a plucked off a finger-nail and gave it to him. But when he went to the upper world and went to cross [[28]]the stream, he let this burning nail also drop into the water. Again he went back, and his great-great-grandmother plucked off a third nail for him. And this went on, Ma-ui letting the nails fall into the water, and Ma-hui’a giving him the nails off her fingers, until at last all the nails of all her fingers were given to him.
But still he went on letting the burning nails fall into the water that he had to cross, and at last the nails of his great-great-grandmother’s toes as well as the nails of her fingers were given to him—all but the nail on the last of her toes. Ma-ui went back to her to get this last nail. Then Ma-hui’a became blazing angry; she plucked the nail off, but instead of giving it to him she flung it upon the ground.
Fire poured out of the nail and took hold on everything. Ma-ui ran to the upper world, and Ma-hui’a in her anger ran after him. He dashed into the water. But now the forests were blazing, and the earth was burning, and the water was boiling. Ma-ui ran on, and Ma-hui’a ran behind him. As he ran he chanted a magic incantation for rain to come, so that the burning might be put out:
“To the roaring thunder;
To the great rain—the long rain;
To the drizzling rain—the small rain;