HAWAIIAN LEGEND AND FOLK STORY.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17941, 8 December 1923, Page 13

HAWAIIAN LEGEND AND FOLK STORY.

I ititncLE.

f ... TCS "TOB PBSBS.") V s "" Brown, LL.D.) t yABLES. m the Story, jrolatiwi to w» 1 of the novel 1S n0 ar on one of the most Xvirf hj»» ir" 1 "; e ,! OTP w e that keeps children nd entranced from their TJie savage tribe that \ V i.. ;t has still to be (lis-'-ftd t* story-teller M other orte; it might al>*T called the instinctive art; its « tie fi">t iliKO»onis of ? vFrnCT of mankind that to er.shr.no hero, the essence of « beSI force of a tradition in the form f'lL was to make it lire .is long Before the appl.ca- - J nipt fo its P res€rvatlon thp 1 J* ujc real dramatic life in itself; r?. {o pass from lip to lip. genL to generation, with tone and t hgt eeerned to make it grow : t he present and apply to the ! "L o t And in most communities the • Wof exceptional talent and trainTtaia story-telling a profession, [ L the specialty of a, family. 'When broiifibt the story to the eyes * j thousand the wandering troubaf 'iflrdisjppsattd with the aura of per- ' puEty hj« threw round the stcry; it I. fa g 0 on the stage if it would [ rttfißt its f personal magnetism. And I fflßTa9 has divorced it still farther f J® jgpeal to the ear. It is not imt «»]>!« that broadcasting may bring | to it ita old audienoe and portal iI |g {be soul, and that the story-teller I !t d troubadour may become a profes- [ jgain, and regain the importance ; i»|udin primitiro pges. jfrtttre Life and Belief in the Story. ' Jt i» the universality of this passion that has preserved primitive i&ttd belief better than any other 'fan of "tradition; without tho folktoy to would be at a loss to picture people thought and in it the form and body of ttfotow times <uid souls are preserved in amber. But one of the ityt ifciiing things about it is that '.different the people that formin race or stage of culDtl» thete is a fundamental similarity |jk ita materials it uses. Some ethbeen inclined, when dealijjjfjrfik individual peoples, to attribute Iftiio- racial affinity or intercourse. |M Jt is' based,, ,oh the fact Iplftimaii natnre when stripped of its. ptefe veneering iB much the same in jmj&itude to the phenomena around Ipti that these phenomena are on the Ppfejimilar in their manifestations. it signifies that the storyjpp«|. faculty traft. developed soon after |K^m^m«it J ''an.4 i before he spread jpgggyita % world ; however primi-it-attempts to allegorise to Nature, the sky, £ ocean, the animals, the death, pturentljpQcl, into story. ■ Sometimes one' prominent, sometimes lower the culture the Iflj&toving and moving thing, dominates the allegory; in the man,, the more he f|||pSt(t acknowledge his relation<§^K^ f ttl)mals; he takes some aniAncestor, and the living community; and he loves aniipai as his predecesto ; give it superjijjjjMp&gaMi'apd to reyel in its adit were a human hero or * cu^tui ' e advances it i° w^er f orms & na and moulds the sun, the moon, the lightning, the storm into his fate; though he he brings them into llMwjfWmte to himaelr; and if he WBroßithT'' or' imperialism hekinship with his Ulto subordination to |S divine stoiy is born, and M the fable rid and m&nipulatfey , the troubadour or || court. Greater Gods.. like, all Polynesian: itiuct W of UiQ (w myilioiogj on cue iNoioe ami oansKi'it uess or conception ol I Mature ana piiilosoot Uie allegory. Xiiey me idea oi tne creaind sky, the animals ily man and woman, iwogies, give personWhere tho Maori iky-father, and I'apa the eastern PoiyA.tea or light for the ■auans make AVakea hmgs, and Papa ; or aerj from his wife's Ml and £ea, and the ish he threw up, and , whilst the seeds ly bodies. He conith Hina, the mother poups identified with Papa divorced him > live with their Nuu-meha-lani, or f the heavens." The fd gods of all Poly"angaroa and Kongo, i tiie second period - Fornander and the .information, Kamainfluenced by the and-in order to get lie four to three, tiono by banishing' ■analogue of Satan tts. Tne third ,series Ending Maui and form the centre of romantic and varied ethology; fjr they fees of Nature, the and the underworld rta of man, and with re and brothers thev <rf the islands. This has strong kinship 10-European my'tholoitural product of an iturous and coiiquernmbincs some of the t passions of primiibhmity that is olymnother stratum that with the folklore of :The stories, though

still saturated with the supernatural feature, the actual life of the Hawaiians to a large extent; on one side they link with the totemisnf of early cultures and on the other with the familiar names of Hawaiian history. From them we cculd get an intimate picture of Hawaiian life with its sorceries and taboos, its layer upon layer of subdued peoples, the abject condition of its common people- and slaves, and the deification of its rulers with their imperialistic ambitions, and boundless arrogance.

A New Collection of Hawaiian Legends The Bishop Museum, Honolulu, has just issued a new collection of Hawaiian legends, the harvest of a lifetime of intimacy with the native.? made by Mr David Hyde Rice, of Kauai. He was born and brought up in the group and at one time the Hawaiian language was more familiar to him than Knglish. His ear has ever been opon to tho echoes of the old life, so rapidIv vanishing l>efore Christianity and Kuropenn civilisation. Ho never allowed the consciousness of civilised and educated superiority to scar© the native troubadour into shyness and silence ; else these tnles could never have been told to him. Some of them are localised in the Island of Kauai, in which he spent most of his life; but so keen was lie on the scent of the ancient native story that he has pursued it into all the islands of the group; a large proportion of the stories helon:; to other islands than Kauai; the largest proportion to the largest and most southerly of the islands, Hawaii. I shall not soon forget the day I spent witn him in his automobile along the splendid road that runs north-west through Kauai, and then in his sulky along the beach to see and photograph the fishermen from the precipitous bays and cliffs where Hiiaka, the sister of Pele, rescued tho spirit of Lohiau, from the witches of Kalalau a nd brought him to life again by forcing it into his dead body; they were working on the swampy margin of his farm. All day he entertained me as drove with tales of Kauai and especially of this wild and picturesque north-west end of it whence the spirits of the Hawaiians dived into the ocean to make their way to the submerged fatherland or tho Polynesians, Hawaiki. ' Transparent Fables. The art of the shorter stories is transparent: there is no attempt to conceal it. Some are manifestly efforts to explain some natural feature such as rocks that have a - likeness to a human being or to some human feature. One, The Stones of Kane," carries its whole art and meaning on the face of it. Three rocks on the north-west coast of Kauai at Haena, one in the sea callr ed Ooaa or Fast-800 ted, one amongst some trees a little inland called Pohakulda or Longstorie, and one on the top of the ridgo called Stone of Kane, evidently needed some explanation of their peculiar position, to tho native mind; so they are brought as stones, from distant lands; the sister prefers the - Bea, the two brothers crawl inland and succumb: Another story of Kauai called Namaka-o-ka-opae "tho eyes of the shrimp" tries to explain the*human likeness of two rocks under two waterfalls in a stream; a wife angry at a rival for drawing away her husband from her, by a ruse taught her by her grandmother gets her to slip under a waterfall and kills her by throwing a rock on her and by drop-, ping a rock on her husband sitting below a lower waterfall crushes in his skull and leaves his mouth wide open. A third, called Holuamanu or slide of Manu explains by story a slidelike slope on one of the highest cliffs of the Waimea valley. Allegories. One or two are as transparent allegories of rain. The most beautiful is that called The Kainbow Princess; it has all the naivete and poetry of a European fairy tale, and it.brings out the precipitous character of parts of Kauai. A family were shifting from one. valley into another, and had to climb, a cliff by a swaying ladder; the man who carried the baby dropped it; but the parents were overjoyed to see an Akua catch her before she struck the water and carry her off on a rainbow to a cave T>eneath a waterfall in the Waimea Valley. There she lived and grew up into a beautiful woman, nurs- j ed'hy a rainbow that the god 6ent. A prince from "Waimea b«w her sunning herself on the rocks with a rainbow above her head and fell passionately in love with her. He wooed her in vain; with a laugh 6he dived into the water crying "When you can call me hv name, I will come to you." He tried to find her name; but all in vain; he drooped in despair; his grandmother pitied him and, getting the secret of his sadness, told him to go to tho waterfall and, when the jprincess j laughed at him, call out to her" "TJa" ; J that is the Hawaiian word for "rain." He followed her instructions and, as j in the true fairy story, they were married and lived together happily ever after. | . More of the stories are concerned with animals and their relationships to men. Even in the sublime stratum of divine and heroic myths animals appear, especially birds and fish. In some of the Polynesian groups birds are the intermediaries in the appearance of land, and in the Maui myth a rail appears which teaches him the art of fire and as a return he bums the red spot on the head of the Alae. And in the almost universal Polynesian story of the appearance of the islands as the result of one of the adventures of Maui the land is a fish caught bv means of a hook made from the jawbone of his ■ ancestress. And in the volcanic series of gods Kanepuaa tor Pig-K'nne is the deity of agriculture, whilst Kamapuaa or Son of a pig, whose mother was Hina, wooItfui marries Pele the great volcanic goddess. The Pig as 3>ivlaity. These two represent the two sides of portine Work, that which by furrowing the land is the predecessor of the Dtoueh and makes the sod more futile aS its-ravage in rooting up trees- the one is a kindly god, the 1 nere is "«"-. , •',. , nniUl iierable adthe latter » lt J - 1 bandit and ventures « ajjjr u>v ana Ufe that WW * K*«£ he pig as soon as night -feU ,**& nnding all their sweet hls sugar-cane gone, canie tracks with tl-rJog p s . till they c. across him fast asleep >, t £ with ropes he to carry him to .account for certwn do I rocks and springs. lO A-"„ taken to r h e%3e y h fnd t tur?ed them into rocks evidence of the deed to this then gnibbed « P another S 8 another "and j -4. «« hitter that no animal will

the giant Longarm rolled a great boulder down on the hog; but the hog stopped its career by throwing a small stone under it and became a man again, and the stones are there to this day to testify. The Riant made frienus with Kamapuaa and made him his gobetween to the two beautiful sisters of the king of the Puna side; they were washing their faces and combing their hair in two clear pools, and they fell in love with the reflection of Kamapuaa, but he would not go home with them unless they allowed Longarm, their rejected wooer, to accompany. The king gave him his sisters in marriage. And here comes in one of the stock episodes of every Hawaiian war-story. He took part in the war against the people of the Kona side, but made himself invisible in battle, all but the hands that swung the club and did havoc among the chiefs; he then gathered the feather caps and helmets from the slain and piled them beneath the beds. The king missed what were his usual perquisites and consulted his sorcerer, who knew that the club-swinginc hand had been wounded in the thumb by a spear and bade him assemble all his people to find out the thief; when all hands were raised none showed the wound; but Kamapuaa, the only one absent, was sent for and found to hare his hand wounded. He was lel"t the choice to be gone or to die. He preferred exile. It was after this he wooed and won Pele, and, quarrelling with her, tried to put out her fires by floods from the sea, another phase of the everlasting struggle between the waters of the Pacific Ocean and its volcanic fires. He was defeated and became again the pig-fish. The traces of the war are to be found in the worshippers of Pole taking a pig or this pigfish as the most pleasing sacrifice. There is one complete story devoted to Pele, her loves and crimes; it is in brief what the late Dr. Emerson has collected into the long and beautiful epic. "Pclc and Hiiaka" and tells the storv of Hiiaka's love, for Lohiau, the king of Kauai, whom sho was sent to bring as husband to her fiery sister Pele. She finds the king dead, and restores him to life. Again lie is killed by the . explosive goddess of Kilauca, and i* brought to life by one of her brothers. To the surprise of Hiiaka, who is about to be married to his friend Kalcipaoa, lie returns to Kauai, and is recognised by her through the songs he sing;. The friend drowns himself, and the two, united, "live hapy.y ever after." The Lizard In Hawaiian Legend. But the two animah that take the largest place in Hawaiian legend are the lizard and the shaik. The Poly nesiau fear of the lizard, though I found the present-day Easter Islanders an exception, is difficult to explain; for the lizards of Polynesia are harmless little animals. Mr Joseph Emerson, one of the most learned of living Hawaiians in Hawaiian lore, says in his deeply interesting monograph, "The Lesser Gods of Hawaii": "Of all the aumakuas, the fiercest and most universally dreaded is kiha wahinc, the moo, or lizard god. She is represented as a mermaid, a woman above with flowing tresses, while below the waist she is a moor or water-frequenting lizard. Everyone who is much acquainted with the Hawaiians knows the dread, amounting oftentimes to terror, which the sight of a lizard will produce. Auwe ka moo I (Oh, the lizard!) as an expression of fear on the part of my Hawaiian associates was familiar to me in my childhood." An aumakua is the incarnation of an ancestral spirit belonging to and worshipped by a family or clan or section of a community. It.is really a relic of totemism, the sure ; sign of which is that no one would think of f injuring or destroying any animal of the class held sacred by his family." There is no emotion magnifies its object like fear. It seems to make imagination *a microscope that can swell the minutest object to supernatural proportions. In Mr Bice's, collection there are three legends of moos. One represents the mora friendly relationship. In the mountains of Kauai, above Makaweli, a family lived that had a girl who never ceased crying, and "in a cave beneath a waterfall nearby lived a moo, which looked liko a huge lizard or crocodile." One day her father irritated at her crying, pushher out of the house, and said, '' Go to the moo, and live with him." - The little one went off to the moo ; and was adopted by him, and the two would come out above the water-fall and .sun themselves together. After many years, the parents wanted to get her back, and by the advice of a Eorcerer spread a net over the hole, out of which they came from the cave; the lizard jumped clear; she was caught, but struggled to be free. The parents, to' get' her out of the reach of temptation, shifted to Waimea and tamed her. She grew up very beautiful and married the prince of Waimea. The other two, even briefer, bring out the hostile phase of lizards. One, of Oahu, explains the origin of a. point of land called Laniloa, and five small islands near. The point had been a monster Moo, which killed many. Kana, the legendary hero, was going round slaughtering the Moo,, and coming here cut off its head, leaving a deep, stiltuhfathomed hole, and cut the head into five pieces, and these thrown into the sea became the islands. The other, "Puu Ka Moo, How Lizards Came to Molokai," has a strong resemblance to many mediaeval European tales of "the laidly worm" that takes the human form and woos some beautiful woman by night and vanishes at daylight. The most Deautiful woman of Molokai was visited every night by a man who disappeared at dawn. As she slowly wasted away her parents found from a sorcerer that the nocturnal visitor was a monster lizard, who could be a man only at night. He arranged that the girl should get her visitor into a deep sleep, and in it the Kahuna tied white tapa rags to him. As the monster crawled through the bushes he left these here and there, and the sorcerer and his men were able to trace him to his lair, where they found him fast asleep. They surrounded him with piles of wood and set them on fire, and as he burned his body bupst and myriads of little wormlike lizards ran from it all over the island. And hence the hill is known as Puu Ka Moo, or the Hill of the Monster Lizard. •j.'jig t>nu,r£ Xu .Hawaiian story and ■totuei. The shark was by far the most important totem ot tne Hawaiian siroup, j . ana was by no means the monster thuu J I imagination ana tear maae of the miu-ia. 10 quote iur Ji,nit;ison agam: I •"iiie sharii \, as pernaps tno niosn uiu-j veraauy u ol aU UJe auniukuas j ana, t u bay, was regaiueu as peculiarly me menu ana protector oi ail nis laitlitul wuisUipptjra. ' "JtiiacU several louunty uie coast ot the islands had us special patrou snarK, j wnose name, history, piace ot aiiode, ana appearance were well known to ail j frequenters of that coast." "The story of shark intervention" is "extensively believed- at the present day." "One reason lor the aifection shown to the shark aumakuas was the fact that so many of them claimed human parentage, and were related by ties of kinship to their kaiius," or keepers. Ihe shark story given in Puce's colJect:c'i lays stress on the sinister sub of the relationship to human beings, it is called Mano-niho-kahi (the onetoothed shark); he was a shark in human form, and he always wore a tapa cloth to conceal, the shark's mouth in his back. Whenever he saw women going to the sea to fish or gather sea-moss, he would get down into the

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water, and ''"biting them with his one shark's tootii, kill them." The chief of this region of Oahu consulted his Kahuna, so often did this occur, and he bade all his people to disrobe; all obeyed but Mano-iN lho-Kahi; so they dragged off his cape, and there was the shark s mouth. So h£ was put to death. A story in Thrum's Hawaiian Folk Tales, "The ShaTkman Nanaue," told by Mrs E. M. Nakuina, explains the origin of these shark-men. In the reign of Umi, the famous King of Hawaii, a beautiful- gTri called Kalei, who often visited a pool at "Waipio frequented by Kamohoalii, the shark-god, and brother of Pele; he fell in love with her, and turning himself into a handsome man, wooed and won her. The result was Nanaue, who, against the instructions of his father, was fed with meat by his grandfather; he grew up a splenuid specimen of manhood, but always wore- a mantle over the shark-mouth between his blades. He became a man-eating shark whenever he touched the sea, and when caught always burst his bonds and escaped to the ocean. The sharkKahunas consulted the shark-god, and he ordered his son to leave. He went to Maui arid went through the same career, and had to escape to Molokai, where at last lie was overcome and dragged up the hill now called Sharkhill, and with great > difficulty cut to pieces and destroyed by burning. The Shellfish, the Owl, and the Rat as Beneficent. But these two, the lizard and the sharK, were only the commonest of the vast legion .of features of Nature turned into gods and totems. "Each of the various crafts and professions had its aumakuas whose • worship was an essential part of the business." "The fishermen retain more of the ancient superstitions than any other industrial class," says Mr Emerson. Birds and fishes and" worms and trees and locks all furnished totems. Some were maleficent to all but their worshippers and often maleficent to .them when careless in their worship. A few seem to have been looked upon always as friendly; eg., two of the aumakuas of fishermen, the Leho or cowry and the Opihi or limpet'were ever protective. Of birds the owl (pueo) was "perhaps the most beneficent to man of tho lesser gods." "It aided the prisoner in untying the knotted cords with which he was bound, and in making good his escape, and guided the fugitive, hiding him from his pursuers, so that they might not find him." "The rat (iole) shares with the owl th*t, credit of being a most beneficent aumakua." "When, the demigod, Makalii, attempted to rob mankind of their food by putting all tfne taro, potatoes, yams, bananas, etc., into a net, which he hung un out of reach of men iii the sky above Hanalei in Kauai, it was a rat, hidden away in the net of Makalii by the man Puluena, who bit a hole in the net and let nil the food drop down to earth. For this important service the iole was associated with Kanepuaa, the furrowmaking god, as a god of agriculture." But it must not be forgotten that this was the vegetarian and edible rat that the Polynesians carried ever with them in their migrations, and not the larger and carnivorous rat that came in European ships and has almost exterminated the indigenous. Another quadruped that the Polynesians took with them to most of their new colonies was the dog, and this, too, was edible and to a large extent vegetarian. Mr Emerson says of it: "The Hawaiians throughout all the islands were passionately fond of their dogs, treating them with the same affection which they bestowed upon the other members of their families"; and hence "the dog-god is associated with faithful friendship to man and /Superhuman sagacity, as may be seen in the really beautiful story of the dog Puapualenalena, who flourished over four hundred years ago in the time of King Liloa."