"There are seven hau, you men with rotten teeth.">[
[Footnote 5: Thomson says that the Fijians differ from the Polynesians in their indifference to beauty in nature.]
3. ANALOGY: ITS PICTORIAL QUALITY
A second significant trait in the treatment of objective life, swiftness of analogy, affects the Polynesian in two ways: the first is pictorial and plays upon a likeness between objects or describes an idea or mood in metaphorical terms; the second is a mere linguistic play upon words. Much nomenclature is merely a quick picturing which fastens attention upon the special feature that attracts attention; ideas are naturally reinforced by some simple analogy. I recall a curious imported flower with twisted inner tube which the natives call, with a characteristic touch of daring drollery, "the intestines of the clergyman." Spanish moss is named from a prominent figure of the foreign community "Judge Dole's beard." Some native girls, braiding fern wreaths, called my attention to the dark, graceful fronds which grow in the shade and are prized for such work. "These are the natives," they said; then pointing slyly to the coarse, light ferns burned in the sun they added, "these are the foreigners." After the closing exercises of a mission school in Hawaii one of the parents was called upon to make an address. He said: "As I listen to the songs and recitations I am like one who walks through the forest where the birds are singing. I do not understand the words, but the sound is sweet to the ear." The boys in a certain district school on Hawaii call the weekly head inspection "playing the ukulele" in allusion to the literal interpretation of the name for the native banjo. These homely illustrations, taken from the everyday life of the people, illustrate a habit of mind which, when applied for conscious emotional effect, results in much charm of formal expression. The habit of isolating the essential feature leads to such suggestive names as "Leaping water," "White mountain," "The gathering place of the clouds," for waterfall or peak; or to such personal appellations as that applied to a visiting foreigner who had temporarily lost his voice, "The one who never speaks"; or to such a description of a large settlement as "many footprints."[1] The graphic sense of analogy applies to a mountain such a name as "House of the sun"; to the prevailing rain of a certain district the appellation "The rain with a pack on its back," "Leaping whale" or "Ghostlike"; to a valley, "The leaky canoe"; to a canoe, "Eel sleeping in the water." A man who has no brother in a family is called "A single coconut," in allusion to a tree from which hangs a single fruit.[2]
This tendency is readily illustrated in the use of synonyms. Oili means "to twist, roll up;" it also means "to be weary, agitated, tossed about in mind." Hoolala means "to branch out," as the branches of a tree; it is also applied in sailing to the deflection from a course. Kilohana is the name given to the outside decorated piece of tapa in a skirt of five layers; it means generally, therefore, "the very best" in contrast to that which is inferior. Kuapaa means literally "to harden the back" with oppressive work; it is applied to a breadfruit parched on the tree or to a rock that shows itself above water. Lilolilo means "to spread out, expand as blossom from bud;" it also applies to an open-handed person. Nee may mean "to hitch along from one place to another," or "to change the mind." Palele means "separate, put somewhere else when there is no place vacant;" it also applies to stammering. These illustrations gathered almost at random may be indefinitely multiplied. I recall a clergyman in a small hamlet on Hawaii who wished to describe the character of the people of that place. Picking up a stone of very close grain of the kind used for pounding and called alapaa, literally, "close-grained stone," he explained that because the people of that section were "tight" (stingy) they were called Kaweleau alapaa. This ready imitativeness, often converted into caricature, enters into the minutest detail of life and is the clew to many a familiar proverb like that of the canoe on the coral reef quoted in the text.[3] The chants abound in such symbols. Man is "a long-legged fish" offered to the gods. Ignorance is the "night of the mind." The cloud hanging over Kaula is a bird which flies before the wind[4]—
The blackbird begged,
The bird of Kaula begged,
Floating up there above Waahila.
The coconut leaves are "the hair of the trees, their long locks." Kailua district is "a mat spread out narrow and gray."
The classic example of the use of such metaphor in Hawaiian song is the famous passage in the Hauikalani in which chiefs at war are compared with a cockfight, the favorite Hawaiian pastime[5] being realistically described in allusion to Keoua's wars on Hawaii:
Hawaii is a cockpit; the trained cocks fight on the ground.
The chief fights—the dark-red cock awakes at night for battle;
The youth fights valiantly—Loeau, son of Keoua.
He whets his spurs, he pecks as if eating;
He scratches in the arena—this Hilo—the sand of Waiolama.
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