THE KUMULIPO

A Hawaiian Creation Chant

translated and edited with commentary by

MARTHA WARREN BECKWITH

University of Chicago Press

[Published 1951, copyright not renewed]

[Scanned at sacred-texts.com, June 2001,
re-edited stampe@hawaii.edu, November 2001]

To the memory of

ANNIE M. ALEXANDER

Lifelong Friend and Comrade from
early days in Hawaii

Whose generous sponsorship has made
the author’s research possible

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Contents

PART I. SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

PART II. THE CHANT

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PART III. THE POLYNESIAN CHANT OF CREATION

APPENDIXES

Introduction

THE Kalakaua text of the Hawaiian genealogical prayer chant called the "Kumulipo" covers sixty-six pages of a small pamphlet printed in Honolulu in 1889 after a manuscript copy at that time in the possession of the ruling King Kalakaua but now the property of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, to which it passed in 1922 from the estate of Prince Kalanianaole, nephew of the former rulers. A prose note of two pages attached to the text tells the circumstances under which the chant was allegedly composed and recited in old days. Except for the third paragraph relating the connection of the chant to the line of ruling chiefs from whom the Hawaiian monarchy of that period claimed descent, the prose note derives from the manuscript source.

A European scholar, the eminent German anthropologist Adolf Bastian, first called attention to the manuscript of the Kumulipo. During a month's stay in Honolulu in the course of a tour of the Far East, he learned of the existence of a Hawaiian cosmogonic chant, borrowed the king's copy, and was able to translate passages from the first eleven sections and to obtain some light on their meaning. This text and translation, together with comparison with other cosmogonies from Polynesia and from ancient Asiatic as well as European civilizations, Bastian incorporated into a volume called Die heilige Sage der Polynesier, published in 1881 in Leipzig.

The interest shown in the chant by this European scholar probably influenced the king to have the text printed. He saw also a chance to strengthen his own hereditary claim to the throne among subjects who regarded genealogical descent as the ultimate test of rank. Six years later his sister and successor, the deposed Queen Lili`uokalani, while under detention

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at Washington Place in Honolulu after the attempted revolt of 1894-95, began a line-by-line translation of the Kalakaua text. This translation was later completed and published in Boston in 1897.

In 1902 a native scholar of Kona district on the island of Hawaii, named Joseph Kukahi, printed in Hawaiian, together with other traditional lore, a text with commentary of the Kumulipo through the eighth section. Except for considerable abridgment, the edition differs but little from the Kalakaua text. Kukahi is said to have held a post at the palace as a member of Kalakaua's household. His version must have come from a common source with the manuscript copy, if it is not a direct variant from it. In 1928 Kukahi's first seven sections, in still further abridged form and with an attempted English translation, were reprinted in consecutive numbers of a short-lived bilingual journal called Aloha. Unfortunately this praiseworthy effort to revive interest among Hawaiians in their literary heritage is without importance for this study.

As a printed text the Kumulipo chant is thus buried in obscure libraries out of reach of scholars today and unknown even to the few Hawaiians left who read their own language and might be able to interpret its meaning. Of manuscript texts, the most important after that reproduced by Kalakaua in his printed edition is an unsigned book of genealogies attributed to "Kamokuiki." The late J. M. Poepoe called this Kamokuiki "one of those who were instructed with David Malo under Auwae, the great genealogist of Kamehameha's last days," who "filled in the genealogy left incomplete by Malo ... from Puanue back to Kumulipo and forward to Wakea." Of the two thousand one hundred and two lines of the Kumulipo chant as it appears in the Kalakaua text, over one-half are straight listings of names of man and wife, kane and wahine. The Kamokuiki book gives all these genealogies,

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each under its own heading and with variations unimportant in themselves, but proving an independent transcription.

Poepoe, who was Rivers' Hawaiian informant for his volumes on Melanesian society, himself left an unfinished text and commentary on what he calls "Kamokuiki's Genealogy of Kumulipo." Another manuscript by an unknown hand gives a genealogy of La`ila`i from the "creation" to Kalakaua. Still another consists in a translation into English of Bastian's German rendering of the Kumulipo manuscript text, made at the request of Dr. Handy by the Austrian philologist Dr. Joseph Rock. Finally, a fifth manuscript called "Helps in Studying the Kumulipo" contains classified name lists chiefly of plants and animals. These, though important in themselves, have no direct bearing upon the interpretation of the Kumulipo chant.

Besides these written sources I have gone over the text with living Hawaiians familiar with native chant style. In two cases these informants were introduced to me by Theodore Kelsey of the Hawaiian Village, to whom I am indebted for paving the way to the establishment of friendly relations. David Malo Kupihea is from a Molokai priestly family who held an inherited post under the late monarchy as keeper of the royal fishponds below Palama. The late Daniel Ho`olapa belonged to an old Kona family on the island of Hawaii, and his wife was also of chief blood. A third helper was the late Mrs. Pokini Robinson, an old family friend of exceptional qualities of mind belonging to an important chief family of the island of Maui and, although given an English education in a mission household, preserving a constant connection with Hawaiian life and tradition as she knew it in old days under the best native environment and as she followed it through the Hawaiian press. She read the Kumulipo for the first time from the copy I lent her and exclaimed with enthusiasm, "How I should like to hear this chanted!" Finally I am especially indebted to Mrs. Mary Kawena Pukui, of the

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Bishop Museum, for her unfailing helpfulness as interpreter and for her sound advice on questions of detail. Hers has been the final authority in correction of both text and translation. Both have in almost every case been based upon manuscript readings or have been suggested or approved by these Hawaiian interpreters.

Acknowledgment should also be made to the editor of the Journal of American Folklore for permission to use the article on ceremonial birth chants in Polynesia which appeared in the oceanic number of that periodical. I wish also to thank the trustees and director of the Bishop Museum for their courtesy in permitting access to manuscript material needed for this study and in furnishing every facility for work during various visits to Honolulu, and the librarian and staff for helpful co-operation. Discussion of textual and social problems with Sir Peter Buck, Dr. Kenneth Emory, Dr. Samuel H. Elbert, and other members of the staff has been a constant source of stimulus. Although for the final form of the work I must hold myself alone responsible, my appreciation of their aid is here gratefully acknowledged. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Robert Redfield for his exceedingly helpful interest in arranging for the publication of the manuscript, and to the officers of the Press for their cordial co-operation.

PART I

Social and Historical Background

CHAPTER ONE

The Prose Note

THE Hawaiian Kumulipo is a genealogical prayer chant linking the royal family to which it belonged not only to primary gods belonging to the whole people and worshiped in common with allied Polynesian groups, not only to deified chiefs born into the living world, the Ao, within the family line, but to the stars in the heavens and the plants and animals useful to life on earth, who must also be named within the chain of birth and their representatives in the spirit world thus be brought into the service of their children who live to carry on the line in the world of mankind. To understand such a family chant, it is necessary to know what we can of its social and political background, how it came to be composed, the part it played in the ceremonial life of a chief's household, its importance as a perquisite of rank.

Some of these questions are answered on the title-pages of the published text and the queen's translation, others in the prose note affixed to the Kalakaua text, amplified from the original Hawaiian manuscript by the insertion of a paragraph, the third, explaining more fully the family connection of the child to whom the chant is said to have been dedicated. "A prayer of dedication of a chief, A Kumulipo for Ka-`I-amamao and (passed on by him) to Alapai`i-wahine (woman)," reads the title-page of the Kalakaua text. Queen Liliuokalani is more specific. "An ancient prayer for the dedication of the high chief Lono-i-ka-makahiki to the gods soon after his birth," she writes, a discrepancy in name explained in the note itself, and she adds the date 1700 for the time of its composition

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and the name of Keaulumoku as its composer. The prose note as translated under the direction of Mrs. Mary Pukui and checked with the queen's rendering of certain passages reads as follows:

Hewahewa and Ahukai were the persons who recited this chant to Alapa`i-wahine at Koko on Oahu. Ke`eaumoku was lying on his deathbed. The Lono-i-ka-makahiki mentioned in the chant was Ka-`I-`i-mamao. Lono-i-ka-makahiki was the name given to him by his mother at his birth. She was Lono-ma-`I-kanaka. It was Keakealaniwahine [his paternal grandmother] who gave him his new name at the time when he was consecrated and given the Taboo, the Burning, the Fearful, the Prostrating Taboo, at the time when his naval cord was cut at the heiau of Kueku at Kahalu`u in Kona, Hawaii. Ka-`I-`i-mamao was the correct name. That was the true name Keakea gave the child, but the composers of the chant "Kekoauliko`okea ka Lani" called him by the name of Ka-lani-nui-`I-`i-mamao. The "Lani-nui" was just inserted by the composers; Ka-`I-`i-mamao was the correct form. The meaning of the word [mamao] is this. When Keawe lived with Lono-ma-`I-kanaka, a new strain was introduced into the family of `I the father of Ahu and grandfather of Lono-ma-`I-kanaka; as if to say that this `I was greater than all the other `Is. This was the meaning of the word "mamao" ["far off," hence "removed," that is, high in rank] added to the first half of the name.

Before his banishment by the commoners of Ka-u for his evil deeds, [because of] his sleeping with his own daughter, with Kaolaniali`i, he was called by the name of "Wakea." It was under this name that he went with his kahu, Kapa`ihi-a-Hilina, to Kauai, to Kalihi-by-the-sea and Kalihi-by-the-streams, and to Hanalei, and he went to the bush country of Kahihikolo and became demented and wandered about in the uplands.

This was not the Lono-i-ka-makahiki who riddled with Kakuhihewa. A number of different chiefs were called Lono-i-ka-makahiki and they lived at different times. There were three Lono-i-ka-makahiki's. The first Lono-i-ka-makahiki was the son of Keawe-nui-a `Umi; another was Lono-i-ka-makahiki the humpbacked. His time came later. He was the son of Kapulehuwaihele by Makakauali`i. The Lono-i-ka-makahiki whose prayer this was, that Lono-i-ka-makahiki was the son of Keawe-i-kekahi-ali`i-o-ka-moku by Lono-ma-`I-kanaka. That was the Ka-`I-`i-mamao here mentioned,

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the father of Ka-lai-opu`u and the grandparent fifth removed of the King Kalakaua now on the throne and grandparent fifth and fourth removed of Ka-pi`o-lani the present Queen Consort.

This chant of Kumulipo is the chant recited by Pu`ou to Lono (Captain Cook) as he stood while a sacrifice of pork was offered to him at the heiau of Hikiau at Kealakekua.

The priest had said at the time of Ka-`I-`i-mamao's death that Lono would come again, that is, Ka-`I-`i-mamao, and would return by sea on the canoes `Auwa`alalua.

That was why Captain Cook was called Lono.

Besides explaining the dedication of the chant under two different names, the prose note seems to connect it with the consecration of Keawe's son in the temple at the time of his birth, as well as with two other occasions at which its recitation is definitely stated. The first of these recitations was at the ceremony in the temple for Captain Cook when he was received as the god Lono; the second was at the time of Ke`eaumoku's death. The sacred character of the chant is thus clearly established. In two instances it was apparently connected with a religious ceremony within a heiau. In the two instances in which the reciters are named they are priests and two in number, since a chant of such importance could not be intrusted to the memory of a single individual and the technical effort involved must have been of an exacting nature. The reciters seem also to have been priests of rank. Of Hewahewa who chanted as Ke`eaumoku lay dying, we are told that he claimed lineal descent from the priest Paao whom tradition claimed to have migrated to Hawaii before intercourse with southern groups had ceased and to have introduced reforms on that island at a time of decay of the chiefship. After the death of Kamehameha, who had striven to retain ancient religious practices, and the acceptance by the chiefs of Christianity, Hewahewa himself is said to have been active in demolishing the images that embellished the old temple structures.

The death of Ke`eaumoku, dated 1804 by Hawaiian chronology, like that of Captain Cook's landing on Hawaii in

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1779, falls well within known history. Ke`eaumoku was uncle and supporter of Kamehameha and father of his favorite wife. The lady Alapa`i the queen identifies with the child of Ka-`I-`i-mamao by his own daughter, "a woman chief of the highest rank then at Koko, Oahu." The alliance had earned for the chief the joking sobriquet of "Wakea" in allusion to the myth that the original ancestor of the race was child of the Sky-god Wakea by the daughter born to him by the Earth-mother Papa, but this does not appear to have been one of the "evil deeds" for which the chief was banished, such unions seeming to have been accepted among persons of rank. A younger woman of the same name, granddaughter by his daughter Kauwa`a of that Alapa`i who was at one time ruling chief of the island of Hawaii, married John Young the younger, later premier under Kamahameha III. It may have been a last honor paid to her dying relative by the chiefess to whom it already belonged, or the younger Alapa`i-wahine may have been the final inheritor, to whom the family chant was at this time dedicated, or "named," as the Hawaiians say. To understand what such a chant contributed to the prestige of a family of rank, it will be necessary to know something of the terms upon which a ruling chief held his title to control over land rights and ultimately over the lives and activities of his followers.

CHAPTER TWO

Rank in Hawaii

POSITION in old Hawaii, both social and political, depended in the first instance upon rank, and rank upon blood descent-hence the importance of genealogy as proof of high ancestry. Grades of rank were distinguished and divine honors paid to those chiefs alone who could show such an accumulation of inherited sacredness as to class with the gods among men. Since a child inherited from both parents, he might claim higher rank than either one. The stories of usurping chiefs show how a successful inferior might seek intermarriage with a chiefess of rank in order that his heir might be in a better position to succeed his parent as ruling chief. In any case, a virgin wife must be taken in order to be sure of her child's paternity, hence the careful guarding of a highborn girl's virginity until her first child was born. Laxness in enforcing taboo rights lowered rank. Political power also had its bearing upon rank, perhaps because a ruling chief was in a position to enforce the taboos. Nevertheless, a chief might be himself dispossessed of lands and followers and forced to live like a commoner and yet claim the right of rank for his posterity.[1]

The system by which closeness of blood relationship between parents of high birth was reckoned in determining the rank inherited by their offspring is described in four published sources.[2] David Malo's account must date before 1853. Judge Fornander died in 1887, and his notes on the subject

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may belong to Kalakaua's time. The Hon. E. K. Lilikalani was court genealogist during the last period of the monarchy, and his manuscript, prepared "for the information of Liliuokalani" and published in 1932 by the Bishop Museum as an Appendix to Kepelino, must fall within the queen's reign. He dictated its contents to me in substantially the same form in 1914. Rivers must have obtained his similar information from Poepoe at about the same time.

David Malo is our earliest and probably best authority of the four on the system of reckoning rank in Hawaii before the intrusion of Western culture, since he lived at a time when the taboos were still in practice. Malo came from Keauhou, North Kona, on the island of Hawaii, where he was associated with the high chief Kuakini, acquired Hawaiian learning under Auwae, the favorite genealogist of Kamehameha, and took an active part as master of ceremonies at court entertainments. About 1820 he came to Lahaina on the island of Maui. There he became the friend of the Rev. William Richards of the American mission. Abandoning the old faith, he studied for the ministry in the Lahainaluna mission school and occupied a parish on West Maui until his death in 1853. [3]

As Malo is our most reliable native source for ancient practice, so Fornander is the leading foreign authority. Son of a distinguished Swedish clergyman and himself a man of education, he was a resident of the Hawaiian Islands from 1842 until his death in 1887. Much of the time he was engaged in government service. He was married to a Hawaiian chiefess, spoke the language fluently, and was able to claim personal acquaintance with all classes "from the King to the poorest fisherman of the remotest hamlet." He thus won the respect and confidence of native and foreigner alike.[4]

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Malo, Lilikalani, and Poepoe do not differ essentially in their grading of the ranking system. All would give highest rank to the child of own brother and sister, the grades descending according to distance in kinship blood between the two parents, provided these are themselves of high chief, that is, of niaupi`o rank. The union of brother and sister, says Malo, is a pi`o ("arching") union symbolized by the figure of a bow. That between children of younger or elder brothers and sisters (first cousins) is a ho`i ("return") union. Less desirable is the union between half-brother and sister, called a naha, probably correctly a nahá ("broken") union. The child in all three cases would be of the niaupi`o class but entitled to different degrees of veneration in the form of taboos. The child of a pi`o union was an akua, a god. So sacred is the child of such a union that he is spoken of as "a fire, a blaze, a raging heat, only at night is it possible for such children to speak with men," this lest the shadow of the god falling upon a house render it sacred, hence uninhabitable. A person even accidentally profaning thus the sacred taboo chief was in danger of death. A chief of divine rank therefore went abroad at night, and the most sacred chiefs were always carried about in a litter (manele) lest their very footsteps make the ground forbidden. Offspring of both pi`o and ho`i unions were entitled to the prostrating taboo, tapu-moe, but the child of a naka union had only the crouching taboo, tapu-a-noho.

Judge Fornander understands the system slightly differently. He would give the tapu-moe to all three of these unions. Under the highest or pi`o grade he would include children of a half- as well as own brother and sister. By a naha union he understands the child of parents of the same family but of different generations and instances the union of father and daughter or of a girl with her mother's brother. As example of the pi`o rank he cites the child of Keawe by his half-sister Kaulele. Ka-`I-`i-mamao, child of Keawe by a

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niaupi`o chiefess of different parents, has only the niaupi`o rank. A girl born to Keawe by his own daughter was reckoned of naha rank.

Judge Fornander does not mention marriages between first cousins; Malo makes no reference to marriages in different generations. Since the whole ranking system seems to consist in an effort to distinguish the prerogatives of chiefs from those of commoners, it would not be surprising if unions considered favorable among chiefs were exactly those not practiced or even held to be incestuous among commoners. Rivers was told that marriages between first cousins were not permitted by Hawaiians and that their tolerance by the mission at first stood in the way of Hawaiian acceptance of the new teaching.[5]

From these informants we gain only a partial view of family relationships and attitudes as they affected rank among chiefs in ancient days, only such as were preserved up to the time of the last days of the monarchy. Certain it is that there existed a developed system of rank based primarily upon blood descent but also dependent to some extent upon political power and marked by a severe etiquette designed to mark off the chief class from that of commoners through the claim of direct descent from ancestral gods. Hence the preservation of such a genealogical chant of beginnings as the Kumulipo was of the highest importance in establishing the rank of a ruling family.

CHAPTER THREE

The First-born Son and the Taboo

OF THE ceremonies attending the birth of a chief's son who is the first-born of his mother, two accounts are available, one an unsigned text with translation by John Wise included in the Fornander Collection, the other a translation by Dr. Emerson from Malo's Hawaiian Antiquities.[1] The Fornander paper stresses the precautions taken to keep the highborn couple apart and virgin until the time for their first mating. This takes place in a kind of tent under guard, and thereafter the girl is closely watched in order to make sure of the parentage of her expected offspring. At the first sign of pregnancy she is placed under taboo lest evil befall the child through sorcery or inadvertently through offended deities. The people are meanwhile urged to "dance in honor of my child, all ye men, all ye chiefs." Name songs (na inoa) are composed and sung about the countryside. At the time of birth a priest is summoned, sacrifices are offered, "drums are beaten and prayers at intervals are offered from a separate place, in honor of the child." If a son is born, he is "taken before the deity in the presence of the priests," that is, to the heiau, or temple. There the priest ties the umbilical cord and cuts it with a bamboo knife.

David Malo's in some respects more specific account does not differ essentially from that given in the Fornander paper. The composition and chanting of songs before the birth of the young taboo chief is similarly described. Malo writes:

If after this [the formal mating] it is found that the princess is with child there is great rejoicing among all the people that a chief

[1. Fornander, Collection ("Memoirs," No. 6), pp. 2-7; Malo, pp. 179-84.]

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of rank has been begotten. If the two parents are of the same family, the offspring will be of the highest possible rank.
Then those who composed the meles (haku mele) were sent for to compose a mele inoa that should eulogize and blazon the ancestry of the new chief-to-be, in order to add distinction to him when he should be born.
And when the bards had composed their meles satisfactorily (a holo na mele), they were imparted to the hula dancers to be committed to memory. It was also their business to decide upon the attitudes and gestures, and to teach the inoa to the men and women of the hula [i.e., the chorus].
After that the men and women of the hula company danced and recited the mele inoa of the unborn chief with great rejoicing, keeping it up until such time as the prince was born; then the hula ceased....
... and when the child was born if a boy, it was carried to the heiau, there to have the navel string cut in a ceremonious fashion. When the cord had first been tied with olona [fiber], the kahuna, having taken the bamboo [knife], offered prayer, supplicating the gods of heaven and earth and the king's kaai gods [bones of ancestors preserved in woven baskets] whose images were standing there....

The child Ka-`I-`i-mamao to whom the Kumulipo chant is said to have been "named," was undoubtedly born to the purple, as we say. The family name `I means "supreme" and the epithet mamao expressed the further "remoteness" to which his rank entitled him as first-born of a daughter of the ruling `I family of Hilo district to that Keawe who was called "foremost chief of the island," Keawe-i-kekahi-ali`i-o-ka-moku. The two families were closely related by blood; the child was the first-born of his mother, hence he was held to be a god among men, with from infancy the rank of a niaupi`o chief entitled to the strictest of taboo rights, the kapu moe or prostrating taboo, the kapu wela or burning taboo. Commoners must fall on their faces before him, chiefs of low rank must crouch in approaching him. If he went abroad by day he was preceded by the cry Tapu! moe! If an object connected with his person such as clothing or bath water

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was being carried by, the officer who bore it, a close relative with the title of wohi, warned with the cry Tapu! a noho! and all must drop to a squatting posture. To remain standing in either case was punishable by death. Even chiefs, if of lower rank, must uncover the upper part of the body in coming into his presence, as a token of reverence.

The length to which taboo was carried in Hawaii must have developed locally under the stress of competition among ruling houses. It was also a means of power to the priesthood. The prostration taboo with the penalty for its infraction of death by burning, the terrible Kapu wela o na Wi, tradition says was brought from the island of Kauai to Oahu whence it was introduced into Maui at the time of the ruling chief Kekaulike, who must have been a near contemporary of Ka-`I-`i-mamao, since his daughter Kalola became wife to that chief's son; Malo indeed calls its introduction "modern."[2] Only the uncovering of the upper part of the body in coming into the presence of a high chief is noticed by Ellis in Tahiti.[3] Firth speaks of the crouching position taken in Tikopia by one who brings a gift to appease a chief whose anger he has incurred, and Alexander reports from the Marshall Islands in the early seventies: "The people of ... Kusaie and Ponape are all serfs. The chiefs own all the land and when a common native approaches the chief, he comes crouching."[4] Certainly the idea of the divinity of ruling chiefs and the consequent sacredness attaching to their persons and effects is not unique in the Polynesian area. A position of humility as an acknowledgment of rank was, as we know, widespread throughout Asiatic courts. The custom served to increase among the commoners fear and awe for their rulers as representatives of the gods on earth, as well as to preserve, by means of a severe etiquette, respect for blood descent among the chief class itself.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lono of the Makahiki

THE prose note explains the name Lono-i-ka-makahiki with which the final genealogy of the chant concludes-"To Ahu, to Ahu-a-`I, to Lono-i-ka-makahiki"--as the name given to the infant by his mother at his birth, to be replaced after his consecration in the temple by the name by which he is known in history. The word maka, "eye," refers to the constellation of the Pleiades, hiki is a sign of movement; the word translated liberally hence refers to the rising of the Pleiades in the heavens corresponding with the time of the sun's turn northward, bringing warmth again to earth, the growth of plants, and the spawning of fish. At this time a festival was celebrated in honor of the fertility god Lono, god of cultivated food plants not alone in Hawaii but throughout marginal Polynesian islands, and prayed to in Hawaiian households to send rain and sunshine upon the growing crops, spawn to fill the fishing stations, offspring to mankind. His signs were observed in the clouds. Heiau were built to Lono not in time of war but under stress of famine or scarcity. His worship was mild, without human sacrifice such as belonged to the severer worship of the war god Ku. Any man might set up a temple to Lono, a ruling chief alone to the god Ku as a prayer for success in war, for life in case of illness, or upon the birth of a first-born son.

During the Makahiki period athletic sports were celebrated, said to have been inaugurated by the god Lono in person. "Father Lono," symbolized by a long pole with a strip of tapa and other embellishments attached, was carried about from district to district to collect taxes (`auhau) in the

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shape of products given in return for the use of the land distributed by each overlord among his family group. There was also a ceremony in which "a structure of basket-work, called the wa`a-`auhau," literally "tribute-canoe," was sent adrift "to represent the canoe in which Lono returned to Tahiti," or more probably the tribute paid to the absent god from the food supply of the past year, earnest of similar gifts in the year to follow.[1]

Symbolic forms of this sort look as if Lono of the Makahiki had once appeared in the person of some voyager who brought culture gifts, introduced athletic sports, perhaps also the Polynesian custom of the ho`okupu or tributary offering, a word meaning literally "to cause to grow, as a vegetable; to spring up, as a seed." The offering sent to sea to feed the god was hence to come back to the people in abundant crops for the coming season. The basket of food was to provide for the god's "return" in symbol in the year to follow.

There was indeed a tradition that such a human manifestation of the god had actually appeared, established games and perhaps the annual taxing, and then departed to "Kahiki," promising to return "by sea on the canoes `Auwa`alalua" according to the prose note. "A Spanish man of war" translates the queen, remembering a tradition of arrival of a Spanish galleon beaten out of its course in the early days of exploration of the Pacific; "a very large double canoe" is Mrs. Pukui's more literal rendering, from `Au[hau]-wa`a-l[o]a-lua. The blue-sailed jellyfish we call "Portuguese man-of-war" Hawaiians speak of, perhaps half in derision, as `Auwa`alalua. The mother honored Keawe's son, perhaps born propitiously during the period of the Makahiki, by giving him the name of Lono-i-ka-Makahiki, seeing perhaps in the child a symbol of the god's promised return.

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Another and earlier Lono-i-ka-makahiki on the `Umi line of ruling chiefs of Hawaii is better known to Hawaiian legendary history. This Lono was born and brought up not far from the place where were laid away the bones of Keawe and his descendants, woven into basket-work like those of his ancestors from the time of Liloa, near the place where Captain Cook's grave stands, a monument to a brave but in the end too highhanded a visitor among an aristocratic race such as the Polynesian. This Lono cultivated the arts of war and of word-play and was famous as a dodger of spears and expert riddler. He too may have contributed to the tests of skill observed during the ceremony of the Makahiki.[2]

It is not, however, likely that either of these comparatively late ruling chiefs on the `Umi line was the Lono whose departure was dramatized in the Makahiki festival and whose "return" the priests of the Lono cult on Hawaii anticipated so eagerly. Both were born in Hawaii, and no legend tells of either of them sailing away with a promise to return. A more plausible candidate for the divine impersonation is the legendary La`a-mai-Kahiki, "Sacred-one-from-Tahiti," who belongs to a period several hundred years earlier, before intercourse had been broken off with southern groups. La`a came as a younger member of the Moikeha family of North Tahiti, older members of whom had settled earlier in the Hawaiian group. He brought with him the small hand drum and flute of the hula dance. As his canoe passed along the coast and the people heard the sound of the flute and the rhythm of the new drum-beat, they said, "It is the god Kupulupulu!" and brought offerings. Kupulupulu is Laka, worshiped as god of the hula in the form of the flowering lehua tree and welcomed also as god of wild plant growth upon which the earliest settlers had subsisted and still continued to subsist to some extent during the cold winter months before staple crops were ready to gather. This La`a-mai-kahiki took wives

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in various districts, especially on Oahu, stronghold of Lono worship, from whom families now living claim descent. He seems to have sailed back to Tahiti at least once before his final departure.[3] In this sojourner belonging to a great family from the south, who came like a god, enriched the festival of the New Year with games and drama, possibly organized the collection of tribute on a southern pattern, and departed leaving behind him a legend of divine embodiment, one is tempted to recognize a far earlier appearance of that Lono of the Makahiki in whose name the Kumulipo chant was dedicated to Keawe's infant son and heir.

Not that it is necessary to attach the symbol of divine incarnation to any actual historical event. Arrival and departure by canoe would be the normal way to dramatize the advent of a god. Just as Vedic hymns visualize the arrival of invited gods to the sacrifice in chariots drawn by steeds each of a distinctive color because thus they were accustomed to see their own superiors approach, so Lono would come to island dwellers in a double canoe of divine proportions such as their own chiefs employed. Not this chief or that was the unique god of the Makahiki. In each human birth of a niaupi`o child there lived anew a Lono to preserve and carry forward the sacred stock. Each year when the sun turned its course northward and warmth and quiet weather prevailed, there returned to his worshipers this procreative force, the beneficent god of the Makahiki.

CHAPTER FIVE

Captain Cook as Lono

WE KNOW that once, indeed, in historic times, the god Lono's looked-for return seemed to have become a reality. The British officer Captain James Cook, sailing north under orders to explore the Pacific Coast of North America for a northwest passage to the Atlantic, touched upon a hitherto uncharted island, northernmost of the Hawaiian group, and on, his return, on January 17, 1779, anchored off Kealakekua, "Pathway-of-the-gods," on the larger island of Hawaii. The wondering multitude crowding the shore to witness this marvel were easily persuaded by their priests of the Lono cult that the prophesied day was at hand.

The story is told circumstantially by Cook's underofficer, Captain James King, who often accompanied Cook on his visits to shore and was taken by the natives for his son.[1] Upon first landing, King writes that they "were received by four men, who carried wands tipped with dog's hair, and marched before us, pronouncing with a loud voice a short sentence, in which we could only distinguish the word Orono.... The crowd, which had been collected on the shore, retired at our approach; and not a person was to be seen, except a few lying prostrate on the ground, near the huts of the adjoining village."[2] The account tallies well with what we know of the prostrating taboo in the presence of deity and of the identification of the visitor with the god of the Makahiki, about the time of which festival Cook's arrival

{p. 23}

took place. Hence the invocation to "O Rono" (Lono), as a note adds: "Captain Cook generally went by this name among the natives of Owhyee [Hawaii]; but we could never learn its direct meaning. Sometimes they applied it to an invisible being, who, they said, lived in the heavens. We also found that it was a title belonging to a person of great rank and power in the island, who resembles pretty much the Delai Lama of the Tartars, and the celestial emperor of Japan."

The stone platform is still standing that marks the site of the heiau to which the priests of Lono conducted Cook and his companion for the ceremony of chanting and offerings appropriate to the welcome of a god. The prose note asserts that at this time the Kumulipo prayer chant was recited, with "Puou" as the officiating priest. Unfortunately King's full description of the occasion neither confirms nor disproves the tradition. Puou is easily to be identified with the old chief called "Koah" in King's account, who seems to have taken the lead throughout in the reception of the visitors. He had been a great warrior but at this time is described as "a little old man, of an emaciated figure; his eyes exceedingly sore and red, and his body covered with a white leprous scurf." Another priest, described by King as "a tall young man with a long beard," also took part in the chanting. King writes the name as "Kairekeekeea," possibly to be identified with Pailili or Pailiki, who, according to Fornander, substituted at this time for his absent father.[3]

This younger priest chanted "a kind of hymn ... in which he was joined by Koah." Of their manner of chanting King writes: "Their speeches, or prayers, were delivered ... with a readiness and volubility that indicated them to be according to some formulary." At the presentation of a dressed hog to the captain, Koah "addressed him in a long speech, pronounced with much vehemence and rapidity." With Cook

{p. 24}

perched on a kind of scaffolding, the two priests further delivered a chant "sometimes in concert, and sometimes alternately" and lasting "a considerable time." Finally, before the guests were fed, the younger priest "began the same kind of chant as before, his companion making regular responses." These diminished to a single "Orono," an invocation plainly addressed to the god Lono, believed to be there present in the person of the distinguished stranger.

It is not surprising that during the days that followed the successful attack against a god who had proved fallible to weapons, the old warrior advised putting to rout the whole expedition, while the young chief, who had acted as political head during the absence of his superior, remained friendly. The matter-of-fact way in which the multitude regarded the death of a god has curious confirmation in King's statement that after Cook's death the people inquired anxiously of King when "the Orono" would come again.`

CHAPTER SIX

Two Dynasties

THE year 1700 for the date of composition of the Kumulipo chant and the name of Keaulumoku for its composer appear on the title-page of the queen's translation. Both statements are highly conjectural. To a song-maker called "Keaulumoku" is ascribed the famous prophetic vision still extant, describing the conquest of Hawaii by Kamehameha and dated 1782 by Hawaiian chronologists. This was only a few years after Cook's visit. The poet's dates are given from 1716 to 1784. However inexact, they certainly preclude the possibility that the same man composed a birth chant for Keawe's son and heir and a threnody for the defeat of the young heir who inherited the overlordship after the long rule ended of Keawe's grandson born to the same parent for whom the Kumulipo prayer chant is claimed. Possibly the name was titular and passed from one court poet to another. Possibly to the renowned poet of Kamehameha's rime was intrusted the task of weaving together family genealogies and eulogistic songs into an integrated whole such as we have in the Kumulipo chant as it exists today. Such was undoubtedly the custom within a great house risen to power.

For the date, if the chant was actually originally recited to celebrate the birth of Keawe's son, the year 1700 may not be inexact. Ka-`I-`i-mamao had no long rule after Keawe's death, and his son Kalani-opu`u was certainly ruling chief at the time of Cook's arrival in 1779. Chronology gives 1752 as the date of his succession. Keawe's period must date back to

{p. 26}

the early eighteenth century. Eulogistic chants call him "Lord [Haku] of Hawaii," the term Mo`i, "Supreme," not having been used, says Stokes, before the time of Kamehameha III. In chant he is named

The boast of divine origin put forth in the chant of his rival Kuali`i of Oahu is said to be an attempt to offset the prestige derived by Keawe from the long lineage claimed for his family stock in the Kumulipo. "Are you two equal?" asks the poet, and he answers:

With such boasts the Oahu peerage sought to discredit the claims of its powerful rival on the island of Hawaii.[1]

The system of inheritance according to rank has always proved itself one well calculated to stir up discord between rival aspirants. Hawaii was no exception to this rule. Kamehameha's conquest, which finally brought the whole group under the one ruling family, began with a struggle for land of a disinherited faction after the death of Kalani-opu`u, grandson of Keawe. It was indeed from two sons of Keawe by different mothers, not without later intertwinings of family relationship, that were descended the two lines who ruled over the united kingdom throughout the period of the monarchy from the opening of the nineteenth century to its last decade; on the one side the ruling house of the Kamehameha

{p. 27}

kings, on the other that of Kalakaua and his sister successor.

A brief sketch of the history of these family relations during the eighteenth century leading up to the monarchy of the nineteenth will make this clear. Keawe's title of "foremost chief over the island" had been fairly nominal. The powerful `I family descended on the Maui line from `Umi dominated Hilo district, the Mahi family ruled Kohala and probably Hamakua. It was the districts of Ka-u and Kona that Keawe's sons actually inherited. To the first-born son to his chiefess of the `I family went the lands of Ka-u district, to another son born to Keawe by his half-sister Kaulele fell the coveted lands of Kona. From this son the Kamehameha dynasty was descended; from Ka-`I-`i-mamao the King Kalakaua and his sister Lili`uokalani claimed descent.

To Kaulele tradition gives a rank above that of her half-brother and a corresponding place as co-ruler with him. "Excessive" the word means, perhaps referring to her size of frame. Certainly "excessive" she was in her favors according to the custom of chiefs in high-ranking circles, so that the story of struggle and turmoil throughout the turbulent eighteenth century on the island, marked toward its close by the intrusion of foreigners and culminating in the conquest of the group under Kamehameha I, is bound up in great part with the activities of the rival offspring of this restless and accommodating chiefess. To a chief of the Mahi family she bore that Alapa`i who rose in rebellion against the sons of Keawe and ruled wisely over their lands during the nonage of their sons. By a visiting high chief from the island of Kauai she became grandparent of that Ke`eaumoku who listened on his deathbed to the chant of the Kumulipo at the turn of the century, the man who had been most active in inciting Kamehameha to rebellion, father also of that remarkable woman called "Cape-of-bird-feathers," Ka`ahumanu, who became the favorite wife of the conqueror. For

{p. 28}

Kamehameha himself genealogists claim direct descent in the fourth generation from the union of Kaulele with her half brother Keawe.

It was, however, through the `I family union that the ruling power returned to Keawe's line. After Alapa`i's death his weak son was overpowered and slain, and the son of Ka-`I-`i-mamao became ruling chief over Hawaii. This was that Kalani-opu`u who appears as "Tereeboo" in King's account of the events surrounding the death of Captain Cook. His life was one of constant strife, first against Alapa`i's son, then in continual sorties against the island of Maui, where he seems to have claimed lands not only in his own right through direct descent from the great Pi`ilani family of East Maui but also through marriage with Kalola, own sister of the ruling chief of that island and a lady of very high taboo rank. Her son Kiwala`o succeeded his father, and it was the divison {sic} of lands by this new overlord after Kalani-opu`u's death that precipitated the revolt of the Kamehameha faction. Kiwala`o fell in battle. His half-brother Keoua by another mother of inferior rank, the Kane-kapolei who appears as the chief's consort in King's account under the name of "Kanee-Kabareea," yielded to treachery.

Conquest over the one island was quickly followed by that over the whole group, aided by superior weapons purchased or seized from the foreigners. In order firmly to establish his position, the conqueror sought marriage alliances with the blue-blooded families of Maui as well as with those of his own island, who looked upon him as a usurper against the legitimate line of out-ranking chiefs from Keawe. The Maui chiefess Kalola was, after the affable custom of chief wives, both mother of Kiwala`o as consort of Kalani-opu`u and, by this husband's half-brother of Kona--the same who became father of Kamehameha--she was mother also of Kiwala`o's chief wife. She bore to him a daughter, and this girl Kamehameha took as his own chief wife and parent of the

{p. 29}

succeeding line of Kamehameha kings who ruled after the death of their great ancestor. On her father's side she belonged to the legitimate Ka-u branch, on her mother's to the Kona, and on both sides she could claim connection with the purest blood of Maui, besides the culminating sacredness imposed by the close mingling of half-brother and sister blood. Of so lofty a rank indeed was this chiefess that Kamehameha himself must uncover the upper part of his body on coming into her presence.

By 1874 the line of the Kamehameha family was extinct. Prince David Kalakaua became king by a stormy election and ruled until his death in 1891. He was succeeded by his sister Lydia, the Queen Lili`uokalani, who was the last representative of the Hawaiian monarchy before its overthrow and the setting-up of a provisional government in 1893, followed in 1898 by annexation of the islands to the United States as the Territory of Hawaii. The election of Kalakaua had not been without bitter opposition. It was to his interest and later to that of his sister as queen to uphold in every way the family claim to blood descent from the fountain source of Keawe's line. With the freeing of the slave class, the abolition of the taboos, the development of a constitutional form of government participated in by foreigners to whom the native rules of rank were alien, and the opening-up of lands to individual ownership, the outward marks distinguishing the chief class had disappeared. Only the name chants and genealogies remained to preserve a family's claim to noble ancestry.[2] The king sought to revive interest in old tradition. A society was formed, and proof of such ancestry was demanded for membership. The printing of the Kumulipo seems to have come as one result of this movement back to old court practices and the ancient clash of rank between the sons of Keawe.

It must be parenthetically observed that, in summarizing

{p. 30}

the path of events leading up to the publication of the Kumulipo, I have followed Fornander without calling in question the factual accuracy of genealogies handed down from Keawe. Actual blood relationship must always be a debatable point under the social etiquette then prevailing in court circles. It is their conventional acceptance that gives them social and political importance for the historian. Sexual freedom for a chiefess after the birth of her first child was accepted or even encouraged by court custom. The father of Kalani-opu`u is said to have been, not Ka-`I-`i-mamao, but Peleioholani, son of Kuali`i and ruling chief of Oahu. The ruling chief Kahekili of Maui was almost certainly the father of Kamehameha. Keawe himself has the name of having mingled his strain with that of every family in the realm, chief or commoner. But for genealogical purposes a wife's children were generally accepted as his own by the nominal husband unless the actual parent was in a position of advantage in rank and power which made him worth cultivating by an ambitious offspring. The journey of a first-born child of his mother to seek recognition of a highborn father in a distant land is hence a favorite theme of Hawaiian saga and romance.

The effect of such loose matrimonial relations in a land where inherited blood counted above all things in establishing the perquisites of rank is to be seen in the dual pattern of court genealogies, where an unbroken line of descent often depends upon the female when a male parent fails. The Keawe line from `Umi is twice so preserved on the `Ulu genealogy. Both genealogies for the Kalakaua family derive finally through the mother.

PART II

The Chant

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Master of Song

WHETHER Kamehameha's favorite genealogist or an earlier poet is responsible for the composition of the Kumulipo as we have it today, the chant represents a master-work in the aristocratic art of song employed throughout eastern Polynesia in the families of chiefs to extol their family nobility.[1] This particular class of genealogical prayer chant is known in Hawaii as a Ku`auhau, a word referred by Parker to Ku(amo`o) meaning a "path way" and `auhau, "lineage," the analogy belonging rather to the meanderings of a roadway trodden out by human feet than to the more familiar symbol of a tree and its branches.

The work of weaving genealogies into a hymnlike chant commemorating the family antecedents was the work of a Haku-mele or "Master-of-song," attached to the court of a chief, one who occupied also the special post of a Ku`auhau or genealogist. He held an honored place in the household. It was his duty to compose name chants glorifying the family exploits and to preserve those handed down by tradition, but especially to memorize the genealogical line through all its branches. Since writing was unknown in Polynesia before contact with foreign culture, a master of song usually gathered together two or more of his fellows to edit and memorize the lines or themselves to contribute passages. Especially must genealogies be memorized by more than one reciter. The oral recitation of a completed chant of eulogy required a special technique in handling the voice. Its utterance was

{p. 36}

in the nature of a charm. Evenness of voice was obligatory. A breath taken before the close of a phrase, a mistake, or even hesitation in pronouncing a word was a sign of ill-luck to the person or family thus honored. Kamakau writes: "The voice took a tone almost on one note and each word was enunciated distinctly. There was a vibration [kuolo] in the chanting together with a gutteral sound [kaohi] in the throat and a gurgling [alala] in the voice box. The voice was to be brought out with strength [ha`ano`u] and so held in control [kohi] that every word would be clear." Such a feat of memory as must have been involved in the composition and recitation of a sacred chant like the Kumulipo was hence common to the gifted expert in Polynesia.

The importance of such name chants in establishing a chief's claim of birth is illustrated in a legend of a certain exiled chief from the island of Hawaii who claimed asylum with a powerful chief of Oahu, unattended by any of his followers. Upon his name chant being demanded as proof of his title to rank, he is said to have escaped disgrace by gaining the favor of a visiting chiefess just come from Kauai and reciting as his own a new chant taught him by the complacent visitor. A similar story tells of a surfing competition where jealous rivals concealed from the winner the ruling that a surfing chant proving his rank must be recited before a contestant would be permitted to beach his board after the race, and how he was saved from drowning only by the impromptu composition of an old retainer, the famous "Surfing Song of Naihe" still chanted to extol the waves of Kona that comb the surfing beaches of the young chief's home.[2] In both cases it is clear that the chief himself would have been helpless to recall his family chant or to improvise one for himself that would have met the severe standard of expert court composition.

The Kumulipo as we have it today is popularly known as

{p. 37}

the Hawaiian "Song of Creation," from its name Kumu(u)li-po, "Beginning-(in)-deep-darkness." It consists in sixteen Sections called wa, a word used for an interval in time or space. The first seven sections fall within a period called the Po, the next nine belong to the Ao, words generally explained as referring to the world of "Night" before the advent of "Day"; to "Darkness" before "Light"; or, as some say, to the "Spirit world" in contrast to the "World of living men," with whom the "World of reason" began. In the first division are "born" (hanau) or "come forth" (puka) species belonging to the plant and animal world, in the second appear gods and men. Of the over two thousand lines that make up the whole chant, more than a thousand are straight genealogies listing by pairs, male and female, the various branches (lala) making up the family lines of descent. Thus, although the whole is strung together within a unified framework, it may in fact consist of a collection of independent family genealogies pieced together with name songs and hymns memorializing the gods venerated by different branches of the ancestral stock.

The highly conventionalized form employed in poetic composition by court poets throughout marginal Polynesian groups has thus far discouraged an intensive study of so important a contribution to the oral literature of this isolated people. Each year the difficulty of editing and translating becomes greater. The Kalakaua text itself contains misprints, besides puzzling elisions in the manuscript due to oral memorizing. Since the chant has already died on the lips of a reciter, the absence of any sign for the unvocalized glottal catch makes it necessary to distinguish, by the probable meaning alone, words from quite different roots that are spelled alike in the text, The language is often. archaic, containing many words completely unknown to. modern Hawaiians. Little is known with any assurance of the court use

{p. 38}

of words once common to chiefs within their own inner circle.

Under the tension of court etiquette, moreover, poetic phrasing was purposely allusive, with elision and the play of fairly complex symbol obscuring the surface meaning and rendering doubly ambiguous the hidden and inner intention which was the real subject of the passage. It heaped up mythical or legendary allusions with which the modern reader can hardly be familiar. It used poetical devices of sound, such as repetition, assonance, and linked lines, often as a mnemonic device but also with a deeper implication, since an accumulation of words of like sound had power in determining the fates of men. Endless listing, arranged seemingly for sound even in genealogies, employed a constant parallelism, a balance in pairs, often of opposites such as male and female, above and below, plant and animal, sometimes perhaps with inclusive intent in order to take in the whole range between, lest the grudge of offended deities bring ill-luck to the family eulogized, but I think primarily for the rhythmic balance so noticeable in the formation of a line and especially of a pair of lines, although I have not myself detected any use of this parallelism in the management of the voice in recitation.

Most puzzling to the uninitiated today is the passion for puns together with a double court usage of words destined to land the translator in unexpected pitfalls as he ventures along unfamiliar ways obscured by so rich a verbiage of language. The use of a double meaning in a word extends to whole passages. A vivid description of natural scenes or activities, some mood of nature or inthrust of myth, may conceal an allusion recognized by the native listener but wholly misinterpreted by us of another culture who attempt translation. To the initiated such a passage attains value, sometimes even intelligibility as part of the context, only through such symbolic meaning. This is the "theme" or

{p. 39}

kaona called the dominant characteristic of native art--the more deftly hidden, the more delightful to those who catch the application.[3] The meaning of a separate passage must hence be referred for its interpretation to this double significance, often to the meaning of the chant as a whole, and this, as we shall presently see, is a subject for argument in the case of the Kumulipo even among Hawaiians themselves who are familiar to some extent with the requirements of old poetic style.

Nor is this trick of allusion confined to court poetry. It exists today among the most simple with a taste for the turning of verses. A mele given me by a countryman of the island of Maui recites the various scandals within his own family in similar cryptic terms but drawn from a completely banal sphere of allusion. A schoolteacher at Kailua, where we went ashore while our boat was taking on freight, entertained us with some verses he had just composed and was careful to point out the symbol contained within the charming natural scene which the words were ostensibly meant to portray.

One has but to study the rich and picturesque vocabulary of the Hawaiian proverbial saying to become aware of the fondness for indirect speech in the everyday language of the people. The feeling for analogy governs their wit, their gift of naming, their swift use of a concrete example rather than abstract definition. As instance, a Hawaiian in a remote seaside village, wishing to describe to me the character for niggardliness earned by the inhabitants of a neighboring village, picked up a bit of close-grained stone to illustrate his thesis.

Especially are sex and the natural bodily functions subject to conventionalized word-play. Whole passages lost in the literal reading are to be understood only through such application. This obscurity of language is why the Hawaiian taunts the foreigner who tries to interpret his lore. "Always

{p. 40}

keep something back" is the thought in the mind of every native informant, however helpful he may seem and really wishes to be in his relation with the foreign inquirer.

There is, moreover, a hesitation inherent in the character of the content in the case of a sacred chant like the Kumulipo that hinders frank explanation even when the meaning is clear to the one questioned. This is not necessarily because he knows that allusions which are to him the natural subjects of jest and story may be considered indelicate by a foreigner. It is also because of the sacred nature of such a revelation and the fact that knowledge has been intrusted to him as a kind of charm to be guarded for his own prestige in commanding the favor of the gods. So Bastian reports the bitter reply of the old man whom he was prodding with questions about the meaning of certain allusions in the chant, "Wollt ihr mir meinen einzigen Schatz rauben?" ("Would you rob me of my only treasure?")

Because of this dominant part played by symbolism in Hawaiian poetic style, it is important to know the theme or kaona of the whole composition in order to catch the drift of each part. In the case of the Kumulipo a number of such underlying meanings have been proposed, each sufficiently plausible in itself, but difficult of application in relation to the text as a whole.

The general and orthodox view has been to look upon the chant as an actual history of life on earth from its beginning (kumu) progressively up to the coming of man, and thence through the family succession in unbroken line to the birth of the child to whom it was dedicated. As a poetic composition it is thus to be compared with the Greek Theogony and the Hebrew Genesis.

Kupihea, however, thinks that the chant should be read for its immediate political implications. He thinks that King Kalakaua has changed and adapted the original source material

{p. 41}

in order to jeer at rival factions among the chiefs of his day and laud his own family rank.

Pokini Robinson was sure, for her part, that the first seven sections composing the period of the Po symbolize stages in the development of the divine taboo chief from infancy to adolescence, when there begins in the second division the symbolic rehearsal of his taking a wife, house building, and the rearing of a family.

Still another idea, put forward, I think, by Dr. Handy, is that the first division depicts, not stages in the growth of the child after birth, but those passed through while still dwelling in the spirit world as an embryo within the womb of his mother.

How decide among these diverse opinions? An informed young modern to whom I put the question replied, "Probably all are right"; and it is on this advice that I have acted, not holding rigidly to a single concept but allowing, as I think is justified by the obviously composite nature of the whole composition, a wider range of analogy. Passages still doubtful to myself and my Hawaiian helpers I follow with parenthetical question marks. These lines as well as others unquestioned specifically may be differently understood when new light is thrown on the matter. I believe, however, that the reading selected is at least true to Hawaiian poetic art and to the intention as I see it of the passage as a whole.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Prologue to the Night World

T0 ILLUSTRATE, how the slant upon the meaning of a text may affect translation of a passage, here is the Prologue to the chant of the first section, to be followed by the various renderings already published or suggested by my interpreters. The lines read:

Bastian, who knew the text from the manuscript alone, was the first to attempt its analysis. His translation into German gives a poetic turn to the thought. The first six lines give him the picture of a burnt-out world just taking shape again out of the mists of night under the first faint light of the moon. The next four stress the idea of remoteness, at the very roots where darkness begins, far from the sun, far from the "night." Bastian is thinking in terms of a European concept, that of a world conflagration out of which a new world rises. He gets his start from the word wela, meaning "hot, fiery." It is, however, doubtful whether this Old World concept

{p. 43}

had any place in Polynesian cosmic philosophy. Bastian writes:

Rock translates:

Here again the thought is European. The wheel was unknown in Polynesia; still less could the idea of time as a revolving wheel be a genuine native concept. Nor did the Polynesian poet stand off and view his world in Miltonic form as trembling "in shadowy fashion" through "an awful veil of cloud." He thought of it, if at all, as a land mass up heaved from primeval waters out of a kind of pit leading to underworlds whence life sprang and to which it might return; arched above also by an equivalent number of sky

{p. 44}

worlds inhabited by ancestral gods. In short, neither Bastian nor his translator has contributed to our understanding of the possible meaning of the lines with which the Kumulipo chant opens.

With Queen Liliuokalani the case is different. Her literal rendering keeps fairly within native thought. As an educated Hawaiian of chief stock, she had ample opportunity to consult those still living who knew something of the old chant. She was also herself a composer of charming songs turned in the symbolic style familiar to Hawaiian mele. Her translation pictures the rise of earth out of slime at the time when the first light begins to dawn out of darkness before the sun was. She retains the stylistic features of the original--formal repetition as a mnemonic device and a play of opposites, in this case the idea of earth (honua) as opposed to heaven (lani); of darkness (po) used here with the contrasting word la, meaning the light of day or "sun"; of illumination, ho`omalamalama, used in contrast to "deep darkness" or "depth of darkness," lipo, lipolipo. Emphasis upon the dawn of light bringing heat to earth is conveyed by the word wela, meaning "hot" or "fiery," upon the light itself by such specific words as "sun" (la), "moon" (malama), and in the word aka signifying "the first faint light of the rising moon." These words the queen generally renders by some more neutral phrase. The native idea of the word lipo is of "dark from the depth of a cavern, or from the depth of the sea." It implies a space concept and at the same time one of degree of shade as applied, for example, to the change in color of the ocean as one gets away from shore into deep water. As a cosmographic term it describes the ocean bottom where lies the slime (walewale) out of which life emerges. Its makeup from the words (u)li po, "darkness of (the) depth," has already been suggested. The queen writes:

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By smoothing out some rough phrasing and allowing for the running of the seventh and eighth lines into one line, we get a quite reasonable version from the cosmic point of view, a character implied also in the reiteration of the word kumu, read as "source," and ho`okumu, read as "established." The relation of "night" to the establishment of earth is not, how ever, made clear.

The Aloha translation from Kukahi's text follows the same train of thought. The first lines--

suggest the Polynesian myth of the forcible separation of Earth and Sky to admit the light of day, but I do not know by what authority the idea is read into the word lole, which means "to turn inside out" and is the basis for the cataclysm of world forces read into the text by some commentators, as well as for the idea of the seasonal return of the sun north ward at the opening of the new year, as in the queen's rendering. The next lines read:

but it is doubtful whether Hawaiians knew that the light of the moon came from the sun, and if they did so believe, they were too good observers to represent the sun as "rising" to give such light. In the sixth line walewale is changed to welawela, meaning "intense heat" or "strong emotion" and

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good from the point of view of the link with wela of the first line but ignored in translation, where the line reads:

In lines seven and eight the word kumu is translated by "reason" in place of the usual "source" or "beginning," and the lines are written with inverted commas as if quoting a popular saying,

Poepoe's explanatory notes attached to his roughly penciled text give an even more explicit cosmic meaning to the lines. The first two he thinks tell of "the coming of fire from the inside of the earth and leaving in confusion (inside out) the heavens and the earth." The word Kuka`iaka is "the moon," called "the sun that lighted the period called po." Makali`i is "the first month of the year," and he adds, "at this time these materials were made." The phrase wale ho`okumu honua he refers to "the beginning of the earth because of the melting together of the earthy material and water. They were mixed this way and that, became melted, and are called the Kumulipo, the slimey beginning of the earth." Poepoe is here bringing to bear upon the text the scientific knowledge acquired through foreign culture. He reads into the lines the formation of earth as a factual process without recognizing such spiritual forces as become explicit in Tahitian chants and could hardly have been absent from the thought of ancient Hawaii.

Thus far the cosmic interpretation alone has been illustrated. In the Honolulu Advertiser for November 12, 1936, Theodore Kelsey, born in Hawaii and familiar with the language, although not himself of Hawaiian parentage, printed a "combined literal and symbolic interpretation." Without quoting his whole paraphrase, I wish to point out some ideas it contains that may throw light upon the underlying meaning. {p. 47} He distinguishes the literal interpretation--that of the creation of light and life on earth--from the symbolic, to be found also in the story of the first man Kumu-honua ("Source-of-earth") and the first woman, Lalo-honua ("Earth-beneath-the-surface"), the two called in this chant Kumu-lipo ("Source-of-profundity") and Po`ele ("Darkness"). What is here symbolically pictured as the "earth" (honua) is to be interpreted as "Hawaii's original royal line, hot with fiercest tabu--kapu wela." Makali`i is the season when seeds sprout, fish spawn, and the Pleiades (the Makali`i) appear with other stars high in the heavens. At this time the sun was "like a vital fluid of generation that produced life." As the line of Wakea's descendants increased in number, its beginnings stretched far back into the past and this past grew more and more dim in memory. The poet therefore proceeds to explore back into the profound depth of the past for the beginning of the royal ancestral line. Kelsey has here a definite conception of the symbolism under the literal wording of the lines. Life on earth is engendered by the heat of the sun. As the sun symbolizes the procreative power whence life proceeds, whose source is the god of generation in the spirit world, so a chief descended from the god and "hot with fiercest taboo" carries on through procreation the continuity of the family line. "Darkness" Kelsey applies to distance in time rather than in space. The pit idea is absent and attention fixed upon a genealogical beginning of the chief stock in a time so remote as to be lost to memory.

Kupihea, keeper of the king's fishponds, rejects the Prologue altogether. He thinks Kalakaua himself exchanged it for the original two lines with which the chant opened--

to be translated,

{p. 48} Dark and light, po and ao, he would refer to the intellectual faculties in man as opposed to plants and animals. The first seven sections of the chant represent the generation of the gods in the bodies of beings without the light of reason. With the eighth section man emerges, and the period of the Ao has to do with the children of men, who multiply on the earth from the first birth of the god of procreation in the body of man. With man dawned the rational powers. The Ao is peopled by creatures endowed with power to develop arts and crafts, all cultural activities; the Po, by creatures "controlled" by gods alone, that is, born not through man kind but through the gods. The Po is a spirit world, the Ao a world of living men.

Still more specific is Pokini Robinson's interpretation of the Prologue. Her fresh approach, uninstructed save by long familiarity with chant practice in chief circles, gives her opinion special interest. She believes, like Kelsey, that the lines herald the birth of the divine child whose stages of development are followed in the succeeding sections of the chant. He is called a "fire" (wela) because of his taboo rank, "heavenly one" (lani) as a customary mark of honor. The word walewale names the seven-day purification period for the mother after childbirth as well as the "slime" whence the divine seed sprouted. The shining of the "sun" (la) she refers to the dim opening of the child's eyes to the light. Thus the child is born in the first line, "turns over" in the second, "opens its eyes" in the third. The birth takes place during the month of Makali`i, when the sun returns north ward and the season of growth begins.

I am not sure whether Pokini would push the symbolism back to an Adamic birth, origin of the race, or give it a more immediate reference to the birth of the child for whom the chant was first composed, whether Keawe's or another. If she would actually refer it to the time now lost to memory

{p. 49}

when the first Lono was born as a taboo chief on earth, the lines might be paraphrased something like this:

CHAPTER NINE

The Refrain of Generation

THE Kumulipo chant opens with four sections or odes of identical pattern, each heralding the birth of a special class within the animal and vegetable world. Each class is governed by a parent-pair passing progressively from darkness toward the light, Kumulipo and Po`ele for the first class, Pouliuli and Powehiwehi for the second, Po`ele`ele and Pohaha for the third, Popanopano and Polalowehi for the fourth. Each ode opens with a poetic passage naming these generative agents, male and female, and setting the key word for the development of the pattern within each class. Each closes with an epilogue composed in similar cryptic style, generally descriptive of the world into which the new forms are born. Except for these two poetic passages, the ode consists in an enumeration of species paired one with another in monotonous sequence, tiresome in text translation but no doubt as pleasing in chanted recitation as our own memory tests in popular game formulas.

The pairing of species matching parent and child, plant and animal, or land and sea forms has no apparent rational basis but rather depends upon word-play between names. These names are not invented for mere rhyme value. Most were promptly identified with known species by one or another of my native informants or by Dr. Edmonson, zoölogist on the Museum staff, and Miss Neal in charge of plant collections. The punning names have in some cases a practical magical function. For example, in plant medicine the first food to be taken after dosing with a special medicinal herb is the sea-grown thing whose name matches with it. Thus, after

{p. 51}

dosing with the mint called `ala`alawainui, the Plectranthus australis of herbariums, the Hawaiian herb doctor prescribes the edible seaweed `a`alua`ula known to science as Codium tomentosum or adherens and still to be had in Honolulu fish markets. Such is the nature of the language that these lists may be extended indefinitely. Kukahi omits a number of pairs given in the Kalakaua text, and this suggests that the series may be used competitively like our own parlor games to test a knowledge of names within a given class, in our case generally arranged on an alphabetic basis rather than upon internal rhyming.

In each of the first four odes this simple listing of pairs is followed by their even more monotonous grouping within a six-line stanza, each introduced and concluded with an identical refrain, one line opening and three closing the couplet. This refrain gives the impression of a traditional formula and is undoubtedly old. No adequate interpretation has been offered for the lines as a whole, and a variation in the Kalakaua text from the manuscript form adds to the uncertainty. A typical stanza reads:

The words Wai`ololi and Wai`olola are applied in every day speech to a narrow entrance through which water passes with force and a wide one which receives them without a struggle. Thus Pokini says the first term is given to a narrow bay along the coast where the water carries the fish in with a rush, the second to a wide shore line where the surf rolls in without breaking. "The names of the waters that were applied to a male and a female," writes Poepoe, and adds a familiar saying, Ke uli mai nei, ke ola mai nei ka wai o ka hua,

{p. 52}

translated "The water in the gourd goes gurgle-i, gurgle-a." Kawena Pukui remembers a similar saying applied to sounds issuing from ventholes at the volcano: Ke uli, ola (or uhi, oha) mai nei o Pele. Kupihea illustrated by the gurgling sounds made in emptying a gourd filled with water according to the size of the aperture at its mouth, sounds which the pupil in the art of chanting was taught to imitate in order to gain control of the long vibration upon open or closed vowel sounds at the end of a phrase, an achievement considered the high point in a professional reciter's technique; but I do not know whether this is a universal practice. The line is certainly correctly referred to the parts played by the male (kane) and female (wahine) in the generative process. Bastian was no doubt well informed when he wrote, as translated by Rock,

This is a birth chant, and procreation is its theme. My informants read,

The reference in this first line of the refrain is thus to the generation of life along shore as the waters meet the line of rising land.

The last line is an equally clear reference to the office of gods rather than man in the fertilizing process--

hence the reverence with which Hawaiians approach nature, both animate and inanimate, filled as it is with powers beyond their control.

is the Tuamotuan saying. In these different ways is expressed the separation between man and the natural world, for

{p. 53}

whose fructifying, so essential to the life of mankind, man must nevertheless wait upon the gods.[1]

For the third and fourth verses of the stanza as written in the Kalakaua text I have arrived at no satisfactory translation. Bastian, who had only the manuscript before him, which reads He pou he`e i ka wawa, refers the word he`e to the octopus and soliloquizes: "During this period of creation of the lowest forms of animal life . . . the octopus is present as observer of the process described. . . "; but, since my purpose is to interpret Kalakaua's text, unless clearly bungled, I follow Ho`olapa's doubtful rendering: "Darkness slips into light," where wawa is perhaps a misprint for waka, "a flash of light," rather than the "tumult" of the literal translation. In the second line of the couplet the word nuku is the difficulty. One would read "nest," others a "splash" or a "quarrel," still others take nuku for a diminutive and, ignoring the comma, translate "A little water [wai] is food [`ai] for the tree [la`au]." Emory proposes "earth" as the Polynesian opposite for "sky," correctly written in Hawaiian as nu`u and lani. This suggestion, although far from satisfactory, I have adopted as perhaps what the Kalakaua text was intended to convey, since in later sections where birds and reptiles are in question the words change to hua ("fruit") and `i`o ("flesh"). The typical stanza pairing the tough edible seaweed called `aki`aki, "living in the sea," with the tough stemmed manienie grass, "living on land," may thus be read,

{p. 54}

1 believe, however, that the manuscript gives the true form, shifted in the Kalakaua text either deliberately or through ignorance of the meaning. Firth finds in Polynesian Tikopia the word nuku used in erotic verse for the "place of particular sex interest" in the female.[2] If pou, meaning "pillar," refers by analogy to the male generative organ, the two lines would agree in symbolism with the first and last lines of the stanza. The word wawa might then be an elision for wa-(oei)wa, defined like wao as "a place of the gods." Together the whole would refer specifically to the process of fertilization and growth in the natural world of the i controlled by the gods. But, since I have no Hawaiian confirmation for this interpretation, I use the vaguer symbolism proposed by Ho`olapa. Such a birth chant with its refrain of generation carried through the first four odes of the Kumulipo seems to link together the whole series in a kind of magical incantation to promote fertility in plant and animal forms necessary to man but over whose procreation he has no control.

CHAPTER TEN

Birth of Sea and Land Life

THE Prologue for the first section, if read literally, seems to picture the rising of land out of the fathomless depths of ocean. Along its shores the lower forms of life begin to gather, and these are arranged as births from parent to child. Poepoe calls this a device "used by the composer of the chant in order to get a source of reproduction as we see it in life," that is, he does not expect the poet to be taken literally. He writes:

Kumulipo was the husband, Po`ele the wife. To them was born Pouliuli. This was the beginning of the earth. The coral was the first stone in the foundation of the earth mentioned in the chant. It was the insect that made the coral and all things in the sea. This was the beginning of the period called the first interval of time. During this time grew the coral, the shellfish (such as the sea cucumber, the small sea urchin, the flat sea urchin, tiny mussels, the oysterlike mussels, the mussels of the sea, the clam, the barnacle, the dark sea snail, the cowry, and so forth). In this interval of time grew the moss and the little plants on land. It was still dark. The water was made to be a nest that gave birth and bore all things in the womb of the deep.

Poepoe knows that the coral polyp builds up the coral and that the shellfish makes its own shell--"it was an insect that made the coral and all things," says Poepoe, But was this known to the poet? The selection of hard-coated creatures as the first forms of life on earth harmonizes with the idea of reproductive power inherent in a stone into which a god enters, an idea fundamental to Polynesian thought about the structure of the world. According to a Tahitian chant of

{p. 56}

creation, the building-up of land during the "chaotic period" is due to "affinity" between rocks of opposite character that "meet and unite."' Pairs of rocks suggesting in shape male and female sex organs were worshipped as ancestral gods in old Hawaii, and fertility fish gods in the shape of stones occur in pairs in old fishponds. Even today the popular belief lingers. "Where else did all the stones come from?" asked a child from a well-educated family; and he brought me a box of so-called "breeding stones," which he assured me would produce young. But his elders must have interfered; the box disappeared before the test was completed.[2]

Following a series of stanzas pairing land and sea forms comes a ten-line epilogue, carrying on the idea of a world in its first stages of fecundity, stimulated to growth by the generative powers at work during this embryo period of its history. Soft-bodied shellfish have emerged out of the hard bed of ocean; along the just-risen shore line, sea plants float in the wash of the waves; delicate land growths stand rooted in the soil, their slender bodies swaying with the currents of air. The birth of the climbing pandanus vine, worshiped as a god of forest growth because of its spike of red at the fruiting point, symbol of fertility, leads directly to the advent of "the man with the water gourd," who is "Kane of the generative water," Kane-i-ka-wai-ola, represented, says Kupihea, in gushing spring water.

"The man with the water gourd, that is a god," begins the passage, and there follows the softening-up of earth and the increase of plant growth. The withering vine (kalina) is revivified (ho`oulu). Propagation (ka huli) causes growth (ho`oka[u]wowo). Rootlets (paia[`a]) carry water to bathe and soften the developing tuber. Earth is pregnant (piha) with growth. Earth props up the sky, or, as Kupihea would read the symbol, commoners (honua) serve as staff (ko`o)

{p. 57}

to support (pa`a) the chiefs (lani). May not the familiar Polynesian myth of the sky pushed apart from earth to let in the light of day, often forced upward upon the leaves of a growing plant, refer similarly in a figure to the rise of the chief class in distinction from that of the commoners? The whole passage, thinks Kupihea, here refers, not to the spread of vegetation but to the multiplication of a people through the procreative function symbolized in the "man with the water gourd," Kane-i-ka-wai-ola.

The concluding line, "O lewa ke an, ia Kumulipo ka po," with the reiterated "Po--no" ("Still it is night"), serves to balance the preceding "O he`e an loloa ka po," where the word he`e, I think, refers rather to the waving, twisting motion of sea growths, "sliding" (he`e) about through the water and of land plants swaying in the currents of air than to the squid in particular or to sliding sports, both of which derived ideas have obsessed translators of this passage. The word au, carried over in the first instance from the auau of the line before, may refer to a period of "time" in this unfolding world of the po, perhaps to its "length" (loloa) in the first instance, to Kumulipo as its generative agent in the second. At least, any translation I have seen of this passage has been so incredibly hopeless that an attempt to do justice to the poet's conception will not, I trust, be taken as an indignity to native genius.

Pokini Robinson sees, I think quite justly, in this image of an infant world with creatures floating in the wash of the waves or swayed by currents of air a symbol of the uncertain movements of the young child whose development she considers to be the subject of the whole chant. The rootlets (paia[`a]) bathing the manawa she would refer to the veins carrying nourishment to the child through the fontanel (manawa) from which the unborn child is supposed to receive food from the parent and may still draw nourishment after birth if the mother's milk fails.

{p. 58}

CHANT ONE

1. At the time when the earth became hot
At the time when the heavens turned about
At the time when the sun was darkened
To cause the moon to shine
5. The time of the rise of the Pleiades
The slime, this was the source of the earth
The source of the darkness that made darkness
The source of the night that made night
The intense darkness, the deep darkness
10. Darkness of the sun, darkness of the night
    Nothing but night.

The night gave birth
Born was Kumulipo in the night, a male
Born was Po`ele in the night, a female
15. Born was the coral polyp, born was the coral, came forth
Born was the grub that digs and heaps up the earth, came forth
Born was his [child] an earthworm, came forth
Born was the starfish, his child the small starfish came forth
Born was the sea cucumber, his child the small sea cucumber came forth
20. Born was the sea urchin, the sea urchin [tribe]
Born was the short-spiked sea urchin, came forth
Born was the smooth sea urchin, his child the long-spiked came forth
Born was the ring-shaped sea urchin, his child the thin-spiked came forth
Born was the barnacle, his child the pearl oyster came forth
25. Born was the mother-of-pearl, his child the oyster came forth
Born was the mussel, his child the hermit crab came forth
Born was the big limpet, his child the small limpet came forth
Born was the cowry, his child the small cowry came forth
Born was the naka shellfish, the rock oyster his child came forth
30. Born was the drupa shellfish, his child the bitter white shell fish came forth
Born was the conch shell, his child the small conch shell came forth

{p. 59}

Born was the nerita shellfish, the sand-burrowing shellfish his child came forth
Born was the fresh water shellfish, his child the small fresh water shellfish came forth
Born was man for the narrow stream, the woman for the broad stream
35. Born was the Ekaha moss living in the sea
Guarded by the Ekahakaha fern living on land

46. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the `Ala`ala moss living in the sea
Guarded by the `Ala`ala mint living on land

52. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Manauea moss living in the sea
Guarded by the Manauea taro plant living on land

58. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Ko`ele seaweed living in the sea
Guarded by the long-jointed sugarcane, the ko `ele`ele, living on land

64. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Puaki seaweed living in the sea
Guarded by the Akiaki rush living on land

70. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Kakalamoa living in the sea
Guarded by the moamoa plant living on land

{p. 60}

76. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Kele seaweed living in the sea
Guarded by the Ekele plant living on land

82. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Kala seaweed living in the sea
Guarded by the `Akala vine living on land

88. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Lipu`upu`u living in the sea
Guarded by the Lipu`u living on land

94. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Long-one living at sea
Guarded by the Long-torch living on land

100. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the Ne seaweed living in the sea
Guarded by the Neneleau [sumach] living on land

106. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born was the hairy seaweed living in the sea
Guarded by the hairy pandanus vine living on land
Darkness slips into light
Earth and water are the food of the plant
The god enters, man can not enter

112. The man with the water gourd, he is a god
Water that causes the withered vine to flourish
Causes the plant top to develop freely
115. Multiplying in the passing time
The long night slips along
Fruitful, very fruitful
Spreading here, spreading there
Spreading this way, spreading that way
120. Propping up earth, holding up the sky
The time passes, this night of Kumulipo
Still it is night.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The World of Infancy

THE chant of the second section celebrates the appearance of fish in the sea and forest growth on land under control of the generating agents Pouliuli and Powehiwehi. The word uliuli is applied to the color of deep ocean in comparison to the lighter shade of shallower waters near shore, wehiwehi to the shade under thick leafage where some light filters in; hence "Deep-profound-darkness" and "Darkness streaked-with-glimmers-of-light" as this next stage in the development of life on earth advances toward the light, or, as Pokini would put it, as the newborn infant begins to show consciousness of the world about him.

The Prologue introduces the birth of a wonder child in the shape of a "hilu fish" as the theme for the listing of sea life to follow. Two species of this fish, Anampses cuvier and Juli eydouxii, are among the most brilliant in coloring found in Hawaiian waters, hence the name hilu, "elegant." The lines make sense only when applied to a human child in babyhood. In old days the first solid food given a child was thought to influence its afterlife. The red-eyed kole fish would give the child a rosy tinge, the "sticking" gobey fish would cause good luck to "stick" to him, the hilu fish would insure good looks. A discreet form of compliment in praising a pretty infant, since open admiration was not only in bad taste but might bring bad luck, was to call him a hilu fish. "Aren`t you a hilu fish! " (He hilu no paha oe!) or "What a pretty fish the hilu is! " (Ke hilu he i`a a no`i-no`i!) was the proper phrase. Similarly, the difficult second line may be

{p. 62}

referred to a lullaby that Kawena Pukui remembers her grandmother singing,

The early movements of an active youngster are, furthermore, exactly conveyed in the words "wrestler" and "pusher" also suggested by Kawena for the enigmatic line that follows. There comes next a passage explained by Pokini Robin son as applied to the freedom of a child in obeying the calls of nature. "Ta! Poho-mi-lua-mea! " cries an elder when the odor proclaims that a child has messed himself. The makeup of the word, from poholua for the hollow of the anus and mi for passing urine, is sufficient to indicate the relevance of the expression, and the lines that follow complete the incident.

The epilogue similarly plays between the underwater world, where swims the brilliantly colored fish, and the secluded valley, home of the gods in ancient times, where a chief's son was taken to be reared as a sacred child in order to preserve his high taboo rank as he grew to adolescence. In the sea world bright-colored opule fish play, "the sea is thick with them." Their persistent gulping and swallowing (monimoni) when at the surface links with the words kolomio and miomio for their disappearance under sea in a swift dive. From the "coral ridges" among which the little ones play, they "seek the dark currents" and slip away from land to the darkness that covers them.

To the symbolic sea world in which the child plays in infancy, allusion to the mythical Pimoe, Polikua, and Paliuli lend a playful note of mystery as well as of learning. They satisfy an imperative law of poetic composition common to Hawaiian as to early Greek song masters, where witness the reproach leveled at Pindar by his lady critic for omitting such allusions from his first eulogistic verses and her later sharp warning, upon his attempting to correct this fault, "to

{p. 63}

sow with the hand, not with the bag." Pimoe is a shape-shifting being of uncertain sex, for whom in her feminine form legendary heroes go fishing. Some call her "caretaker" of Kane's-hidden-island, a land "beyond the horizon." Polikua, from poli, "concave," and kua, "back," is the dip at the horizon beyond which the eye cannot reach, also personified in the playful saying of one who has been in the land of dreams that he has been "flirting with Polikua.

Paliuli names an ever verdant land of the gods where abundant food grows without labor.[1] The name is given to fertile spots in deep mountain valleys where in old days children of high chiefs were taken to be reared. These spots seem to be recognized as former homes of the gods by the abundance of wild growth, perhaps of wild fruits such as banana and breadfruit. Kupihea named one such spot in the mountains back of the Kamehameha girls' school on Oahu, another near Nahiku on Maui in the Keanae region, one above Halawa on Molokai where Kamehameha is said to have been brought up, and one on Lanai at Kumoku. Some say that each district had its Paliuli. Perhaps the name was given to whatever secluded spot was chosen in the district for the rearing of taboo chiefs from infancy without any form of labor on their own part. The poet here seems to compare the coral ridges of the sea where fishes play with the green heights where the little human "hilu fish" passes his childhood. Since the material world is linked so closely in Hawaiian thought with the psychical, it may be that the underwater world where the hilu fish moves is to be under stood as symbol of the infant's first contact with the world of fluctuating realities into which he is so early plunged.

CHANT TWO

Born is a child to Po-wehiwehi
Cradled in the arms of Po-uliuli[?]

{p. 64}

125. A wrestler, a pusher, [?]
Dweller in the land of Poho-mi-luamea
The sacred scent from the gourd stem proclaims [itself]
The stench breaks forth in the time of infancy
He is doubtful and stands swelling
130. He crooks himself and straddles
The seven waters just float
Born is the child of the hilu fish and swims
The hilu fish rests with spreading tail-fin
A child of renown for Po-uliuli
135. A little one for Po-wehiwehi
Po-uliuli the male
Po-wehiwehi the female
Born is the l`a [fish], born the Nai`a [porpoise] in the sea there swimming
Born is the Mano [shark], born the Moano [goatfish] in the sea there swimming
140. Born is the Mau, born the Maumau in the sea there swimming
Born is the Nana, born the Mana fish in the sea there swimming
Born is the Nake, born the Make in the sea there swimming
Born is the Napa, born the Nala in the sea there swimming
Born is the Pala, born the Kala [sturgeon ?] in the sea there swimming
145. Born is the Paka eel, born is the Papa [crab] in die sea there swimming
Born is the Kalakala, born the Huluhulu [sea slug] in the sea there swimming
Born is the Halahala, born the Palapala in the sea there swimming
Born is the Pe`a [octopus], born is the Lupe [sting ray] in the sea there swimming
Born is the Ao, born is the `Awa [milkfish] in the sea there swimming
150. Born is the Aku [bonito], born the Ahi [albacore] in the sea there swimming
Born is the Opelu [mackerel], born the Akule fish in the sea there swimming
Born is the `Ama`ama [mullet], born the `Anae [adult mullet] in the sea there swimming

{p. 65}

Born is the Ehu, born the Nehu fish. in the sea there swimming
Born is the `Ino, born the `Ao`ao in the sea there swimming
155. Born is the `Ono fish, born the Omo in the sea there swimming
Born is the Pahau, born is the Lauhau in the sea there swimming
Born is the Moi [threadfin], born the Lo`ilo`i in the sea there swimming
Born is the Mao, born is the Maomao in the sea there swimming
Born is the Kaku, born the A`ua`u in the sea there swimming
160. Born is the Kupou, born the Kupouposu in the sea there swimming
Born is the Weke [mackerel ? ], born the Lele in the sea there swimming
Born is the Palani [sturgeon], born the Nukumoni [cavalla] in the sea there swimming
Born is the Ulua fish, born the Hahalua [devilfish] in the sea there swimming
Born is the `Ao`aonui born the Paku`iku`i fish in the sea there swimming
165. Born is the Ma`i`i`i fish, born the Ala`ihi fish in the sea there swimming
Born is the `O`o, born the `Akilolo fish in the sea there swimming
Born is man for the narrow stream, the woman for the broad stream
Born is the Nenue [pickerel] living im the sea
Guarded by the Lauhue [gourd plant] living on land

172. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Pahaha [young mullet] living in the sea
Guarded by the Puhala [pandanus] living on land

178. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Pahau living in the sea
Guarded by the Hau tree [hibiscus] living on land

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184. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the He`e [squid] living in the sea
Guarded by the Walahe`e [shrub] living on land

190. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the `O`opu [gobey fish] living in the sea
Guarded by the `O`opu [fish] living in fresh water

196. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Kauila eel living in the sea
Guarded by the Kauila tree living on land

202. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Umaumalei eel living in the sea
Guarded by the `Ulei tree living on land

208. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Paku`iku`i fish living in the sea
Guarded by the Kukui tree [candlenut] living on land

214. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Laumilo eel living in the sea
Guarded by the Milo tree living on land

220. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Kupoupou fish living in the sea
Guarded by the Kou tree living on land

226. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Hauliuli [snake mackerel] living in the sea
Guarded by the Uhi yam living on land

232. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Weke [mackerel] living in the sea
Guarded by the Wauke plant living on land

{p. 67}

238. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the `A`awa. fish living in the sea
Guarded by the `Awa plant living on land

244. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Ulae [lizard fish] living in the sea
Guarded by the Mokae rush living on land

250. Man for the narrow stream, woman for the broad stream
Born is the Palaoa [walrus] living in the sea [?]
Guarded by the Aoa [sandalwood] living on land

256. The train of walruses passing by [?]
Milling about in the depths of the sea
The long lines of opule fish
The sea is thick with them
260. Crabs and hardshelled creatures
[They] go swallowing on the way
Rising and diving under swiftly and silently
Pimoe lurks behind the horizon
On the long waves, the crested waves
265. Innumerable the coral ridges
Low, heaped-up, jagged
The little ones seek the dark places
Very dark is the ocean and obscure
A sea of coral like the green heights of Paliuli
270. The land disappears into them
Covered by the darkness of night
Still it is night

CHAPTER TWELVE

Winged Life

THE second section told of the birth of sea life and forest growth, in the third come winged creatures; first insects, then birds of land and sea. In the manuscript the order is reversed, bird life illogically preceding fish and fores