The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 569 pages of information about The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai.

The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 569 pages of information about The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai.
that Halemano from Kauai weds the beauty of his dream, and it is a Kauai boy who runs the sled race with Pele in the famous myth of Kalewalo.  With the Kauakahialii tale (found in Hawaiian Annual, 1907, and Paradise of the Pacific, 1911) compare Grey’s New Zealand story (p. 235) of Tu Tanekai and Tiki playing the horn and the pipe to attract Hinemoa, the maiden of Rotorua.  In Malo, p. 117, one of the popular stories of this chief is recorded, a tale that resembles Gill’s of the spirit meeting of Watea and Papa.]

[Footnote 19:  These are all wood birds, in which form Gill tells us (Myths and Songs, p. 35) the gods spoke to man in former times.  Henshaw tells us that the oo (Moho nobilis) has “a long shaking note with ventriloquial powers.”  The alala is the Hawaiian crow (Corvus hawaiiensis), whose note is higher than in our species.  If, as Henshaw says, its range is limited to the dry Kona and Kau sections, the chief could hardly hear its note in the rainy uplands of Puna.  But among the forest trees of Puna the crimson apapane (Himatione sanguinea) still sounds its “sweet monotonous note;” the bright vermillion iiwipolena (Vectiaria coccinea) hunts insects and trills its “sweet continual song;” the “four liquid notes” of the little rufous-patched elepaio (Eopsaltria sandvicensis), beloved of the canoe builder, is commonly to be heard.  Of the birds described in the Laielohelohe series the cluck of the alae (Gallinula sandricensis) I have heard only in low marshes by the sea, and the ewaewaiki I am unable to identify.  Andrews calls it the cry of a spirit.]

[Footnote 20:  Moaulanuiakea means literally “Great-broad-red-cock,” and is the name of Moikeka’s house in Tahiti, where he built the temple Lanikeha near a mountain Kapaahu.  His son Kila journeys thither to fetch his older brother, and finds it “grand, majestic, lofty, thatched with the feathers of birds, battened with bird bones, timbered with kauila wood.” (See Fornander’s Kila.)]

CHAPTER IV

[Footnote 21:  Compare Gill’s story of the first god, Watea, who dreams of a lovely woman and finds that she is Papa, of the underworld, who visits him in dreams to win him as her lover. (Myths and Songs, p. 8.)]

[Footnote 22:  In the song the girl is likened to the lovely lehua, blossom, so common to the Puna forests, and the lover’s longing to the fiery crater, Kilauea, that lies upon their edge.  The wind is the carrier of the vision as it blows over the blossoming forest and scorches its wing across the flaming pit.  In the Halemano story the chief describes his vision as follows:  “She is very beautiful.  Her eyes and form are perfect.  She has long, straight, black hair and she seems to be of high rank, like a princess.  Her garment seems scented with the pele and mahuna of Kauai, her skirt is made of some very light material dyed red.  She wears a hala wreath on her head and a lehua wreath around her neck.”]

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.