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The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai written by Anonymous

A >> Anonymous >> The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai



THE HAWAIIAN ROMANCE OF

LAIEIKAWAI


WITH INTRODUCTION AND TRANSLATION

BY

MARTHA WARREN BECKWITH



[Illustration: A KAHUNA OR NATIVE SORCERER]




PREFACE


This work of translation has been undertaken out of love for the land of
Hawaii and for the Hawaiian people. To all those who have generously aided
to further the study I wish to express my grateful thanks. I am indebted to
the curator and trustees of the Bishop Museum for so kindly placing at my
disposal the valuable manuscripts in the museum collection, and to Dr.
Brigham, Mr. Stokes, and other members of the museum staff for their help
and suggestions, as well as to those scholars of Hawaiian who have
patiently answered my questions or lent me valuable material--to Mr. Henry
Parker, Mr. Thomas Thrum, Mr. William Rowell, Miss Laura Green, Mr. Stephen
Desha, Judge Hazelden of Waiohinu, Mr. Curtis Iaukea, Mr. Edward
Lilikalani, and Mrs. Emma Nawahi. Especially am I indebted to Mr. Joseph
Emerson, not only for the generous gift of his time but for free access to
his entire collection of manuscript notes. My thanks are also due to the
hosts and hostesses through whose courtesy I was able to study in the
field, and to Miss Ethel Damon for her substantial aid in proof reading.
Nor would I forget to record with grateful appreciation those Hawaiian
interpreters whose skill and patience made possible the rendering into
English of their native romance--Mrs. Pokini Robinson of Maui, Mr. and Mrs.
Kamakaiwi of Pahoa, Hawaii, Mrs. Kama and Mrs. Supe of Kalapana, and Mrs.
Julia Bowers of Honolulu. I wish also to express my thanks to those
scholars in this country who have kindly helped me with their criticism--to
Dr. Ashley Thorndike, Dr. W.W. Lawrence, Dr. A.C.L. Brown, and Dr. A.A.
Goldenweiser. I am indebted also to Dr. Roland Dixon for bibliographical
notes. Above all, thanks are due to Dr. Franz Boas, without whose wise and
helpful enthusiasm this study would never have been undertaken.

MARTHA WARREN BECKWITH.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,

October, 1917.




CONTENTS

Introduction

I. The book and its writer

II. Nature and the Gods as reflected in the story
1. Polynesian origin of Hawaiian romance
2. Polynesian cosmogony
3. The demigod as hero
4. The earthly paradise; divinity in man and nature
5. The story: its mythical character
6. The story as a reflection of aristocratic social life

III. The art of composition
1. Aristocratic nature of Polynesian art
2. Nomenclature: its emotional value
3. Analogy: its pictorial quality
4. The double meaning; plays on words
5. Constructive elements of style

IV. Conclusions

Persons in the story
Action of the story
Background of the story

Text and translation

Chapter I. The birth of the Princess[A]
II. The flight to Paliuli
III. Kauakahialii meets the Princess
VI. Aiwohikupua goes to woo the Princess
V. The boxing match with Cold-nose
VI. The house thatched with bird feathers
VII. The Woman of the Mountain
VIII. The refusal of the Princess
IX. Aiwohikupua deserts his sisters
X. The sisters' songs
XI. Abandoned in the forest
XII. Adoption by the Princess
XIII. Hauailiki goes surf riding
XIV. The stubbornness of Laieikawai
XV. Aiwohikupua meets the guardians of Paliuli
XVI. The Great Lizard of Paliuli
XVII. The battle between the Dog and the Lizard
XVIII. Aiwohikupua's marriage with the Woman of the Mountain
XIX. The rivalry of Hina and Poliahu
XX. A suitor is found for the Princess
XXI. The Rascal of Puna wins the Princess
XXII. Waka's revenge
XXIII. The Puna Rascal deserts the Princess
XXIV. The marriage of the chiefs
XXV. The Seer finds the Princess
XXVI. The Prophet of God
XXVII. A journey to the Heavens
XXVIII. The Eyeball-of-the-Sun
XXIX. The warning of vengeance
XXX. The coming of the Beloved
XXXI. The Beloved falls into sin
XXXII. The Twin Sister
XXXIII. The Woman of Hana
XXXIV. The Woman of the Twilight

[Footnote A: The titles of chapters are added for
convenience in reference and are not found in the text.]


Notes on the text

Appendix: Abstracts from Hawaiian stories
I. Song of Creation, as translated by Liliuokalani
II. Chants relating to the origin of the group
III. Hawaiian folk tales, romances, or moolelo

Index to references


ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE 91. A kahuna or native sorcerer
92. In the forests of Puna
93. A Hawaiian paddler
94. Mauna Kea in its mantle of snow
95. A native grass house of the humbler class




INTRODUCTION

I. THE BOOK AND ITS WRITER; SCOPE OF THE PRESENT EDITION


The _Laieikawai_ is a Hawaiian romance which recounts the wooing of a
native chiefess of high rank and her final deification among the gods.
The story was handed down orally from ancient times in the form of a
_kaao_, a narrative rehearsed in prose interspersed with song, in which
form old tales are still recited by Hawaiian story-tellers.[1] It was
put into writing by a native Hawaiian, Haleole by name, who hoped thus
to awaken in his countrymen an interest in genuine native story-telling
based upon the folklore of their race and preserving its ancient
customs--already fast disappearing since Cook's rediscovery of the group
in 1778 opened the way to foreign influence--and by this means to
inspire in them old ideals of racial glory. Haleole was born about the
time of the death of Kamehameha I, a year or two before the arrival of
the first American missionaries and the establishment of the Protestant
mission in Hawaii. In 1834 he entered the mission school at Lahainaluna,
Maui, where his interest in the ancient history of his people was
stimulated and trained under the teaching of Lorrin Andrews, compiler of
the Hawaiian dictionary, published in 1865, and Sheldon Dibble, under
whose direction David Malo prepared his collection of "Hawaiian
Antiquities," and whose History of the Sandwich Islands (1843) is an
authentic source for the early history of the mission. Such early
Hawaiian writers as Malo, Kamakau, and John Ii were among Haleole's
fellow students. After leaving school he became first a teacher, then an
editor. In the early sixties he brought out the _Laieikawai_, first as
a serial in the Hawaiian newspaper, the _Kuokoa_, then, in 1863, in book
form.[2] Later, in 1885, two part-Hawaiian editors, Bolster and Meheula,
revised and reprinted the story, this time in pamphlet form, together
with several other romances culled from Hawaiian journals, as the
initial volumes of a series of Hawaiian reprints, a venture which ended
in financial failure.[3] The romance of _Laieikawai_ therefore remains
the sole piece of Hawaiian, imaginative writing to reach book form. Not
only this, but it represents the single composition of a Polynesian mind
working upon the material of an old legend and eager to create a genuine
national literature. As such it claims a kind of classic interest.

The language, although retaining many old words unfamiliar to the
Hawaiian of to-day, and proverbs and expressions whose meaning is now
doubtful, is that employed since the time of the reduction of the speech
to writing in 1820, and is easily read at the present day. Andrews
incorporated the vocabulary of this romance into his dictionary, and in
only a few cases is his interpretation to be questioned. The songs,
though highly figurative, present few difficulties. So far as the
meaning is concerned, therefore, the translation is sufficiently
accurate. But as regards style the problem is much more difficult. To
convey not only the meaning but exactly the Hawaiian way of seeing
things, in such form as to get the spirit of the original, is hardly
possible to our language. The brevity of primitive speech must be
sacrificed, thus accentuating the tedious repetition of detail--a trait
sufficiently characteristic of Hawaiian story-telling. Then, too, common
words for which we have but one form, in the original employ a variety
of synonyms. "Say" and "see" are conspicuous examples. Other words
identical in form convey to the Polynesian mind a variety of ideas
according to the connection in which they are used--a play upon words
impossible to translate in a foreign idiom. Again, certain relations
that the Polynesian conceives with exactness, like those of direction
and the relation of the person addressed to the group referred to, are
foreign to our own idiom; others, like that of time, which we have more
fully developed, the Polynesian recognizes but feebly. In face of these
difficulties the translator has reluctantly foregone any effort to
heighten the charm of the strange tale by using a fictitious idiom or by
condensing and invigorating its deliberation. Haleole wrote his tale
painstakingly, at times dramatically, but for the most part concerned
for its historic interest. We gather from his own statement and from the
breaks in the story that his material may have been collected from
different sources. It seems to have been common to incorporate a
_Laieikawai_ episode into the popular romances, and of these episodes
Haleole may have availed himself. But we shall have something more to
say of his sources later; with his particular style we are not
concerned. The only reason for presenting the romance complete in all
its original dullness and unmodified to foreign taste is with the
definite object of showing as nearly as possible from the native angle
the genuine Polynesian imagination at work upon its own material,
reconstructing in this strange tale of the "Woman of the Twilight" its
own objective world, the social interests which regulate its actions and
desires, and by this means to portray the actual character of the
Polynesian mind.

This exact thing has not before been done for Hawaiian story and I do
not recall any considerable romance in a Polynesian tongue so
rendered.[4] Admirable collections of the folk tales of Hawaii have been
gathered by Thrum, Remy, Daggett, Emerson, and Westervelt, to which
should be added the manuscript tales collected by Fornander, translated
by John Wise, and now edited by Thrum for the Bishop Museum, from which
are drawn the examples accompanying this paper. But in these collections
the lengthy recitals which may last several hours in the telling or run
for a couple of years as serial in some Hawaiian newspaper are of
necessity cut down to a summary narrative, sufficiently suggesting the
flavor of the original, but not picturing fully the way in which the
image is formed in the mind of the native story-teller. Foreigners and
Hawaiians have expended much ingenuity in rendering the _mele_ or chant
with exactness,[5] but the much simpler if less important matter of
putting into literal English a Hawaiian _kaao_ has never been attempted.

To the text such ethnological notes have been added as are needed to
make the context clear. These were collected in the field. Some were
gathered directly from the people themselves; others from those who had
lived long enough among them to understand their customs; others still
from observation of their ways and of the localities mentioned in the
story; others are derived from published texts. An index of characters,
a brief description of the local background, and an abstract of the
story itself prefaces the text; appended to it is a series of abstracts
from the Fornander collection, of Hawaiian folk stories, all of which
were collected by Judge Fornander in the native tongue and later
rendered into English by a native translator. These abstracts illustrate
the general character of Hawaiian story-telling, but specific
references should be examined in the full text, now being edited by the
Bishop Museum. The index to references includes all the Hawaiian
material in available form essential to the study of romance, together
with the more useful Polynesian material for comparative reference. It
by no means comprises a bibliography of the entire subject.



_Footnotes to Section I: Introduction_

[Footnote 1: Compare the Fijian story quoted by Thomson (p. 6).]

[Footnote 2: Daggett calls the story "a supernatural folklore legend of
the fourteenth century," and includes an excellent abstract of the
romance, prepared by Dr. W.D. Alexander, in his collection of Hawaiian
legends. Andrews says of it (Islander, 1875, p. 27): "We have seen that
a Hawaiian Kaao or legend was composed ages ago, recited and kept in
memory merely by repetition, until a short time since it was reduced to
writing by a Hawaiian and printed, making a duodecimo volume of 220
pages, and that, too, with the poetical parts mostly left out. It is
said that this legend took six hours in the recital." In prefacing his
dictionary he says: "The Kaao of Laieikawai is almost the only specimen
of that species of language which has been laid before the public. Many
fine specimens have been printed in the Hawaiian periodicals, but are
neither seen nor regarded by the foreign community."]

[Footnote 3: The changes introduced by these editors have not been
followed in this edition, except in a few unimportant omissions, but the
popular song printed below appears first in its pages:

"Aia Laie-i-ka-wai
I ka uka wale la o Pali-uli;
O ka nani, o ka nani,
Helu ekahi o ia uka.

"E nanea e walea ana paha,
I ka leo nahenahe o na manu.

"Kau mai Laie-i-ka-wai
I ka eheu la o na manu;
O ka nani, o ka nani,
Helu ekahi o Pali-uli.

"E nanea, etc.

"Ua lohe paha i ka hone mai,
O ka pu lau-i a Malio;
Honehone, honehone,
Helu ekahi o Hopoe.

"E nanea, etc."

Behold Laieikawai
On the uplands of Paliuli;
Beautiful, beautiful,
The storied one of the uplands.

REF.--Perhaps resting at peace,
To the melodious voice of the birds.

Laieikawai rests here
On the wings of the birds;
Beautiful, beautiful,
The storied one of the uplands.

She has heard perhaps the playing
Of Malio's ti-leaf trumpet;
Playfully, playfully,
The storied one of Hopoe.]

[Footnote 4: Dr. N. B. Emerson's rendering of the myth of _Pele and
Hiiaka_ quotes only the poetical portions. Her Majesty Queen Liluokalani
interested herself in providing a translation of the _Laieikawai,_ and
the Hon. Sanford B. Dole secured a partial translation of the story; but
neither of these copies has reached the publisher's hands.]

[Footnote 5: The most important of these chants translated from the
Hawaiian are the "Song of Creation," prepared by Liliuokalani; the "Song
of Kualii," translated by both Lyons and Wise, and the prophetic song
beginning _"Haui ka lani,"_ translated by Andrews and edited by Dole. To
these should be added the important songs cited by Fornander, in full or
in part, which relate the origin of the group, and perhaps the name song
beginning "The fish ponds of Mana," quoted in Fornander's tale of
_Lonoikamakahiki_, the canoe-chant in _Kana_, and the wind chants in
_Pakaa_.]


II. NATURE AND THE GODS AS REFLECTED IN THE STORY

1. POLYNESIAN ORIGIN OF HAWAIIAN ROMANCE

Truly to interpret Hawaiian romance we must realize at the start its
relation to the past of that people, to their origin and migrations,
their social inheritance, and the kind of physical world to which their
experience has been confined. Now, the real body of Hawaiian folklore
belongs to no isolated group, but to the whole Polynesian area. From New
Zealand through the Tongan, Ellice, Samoan, Society, Rarotongan,
Marquesan, and Hawaiian groups, fringing upon the Fijian and the
Micronesian, the same physical characteristics, the same language,
customs, habits of life prevail; the same arts, the same form of
worship, the same gods. And a common stock of tradition has passed from
mouth to mouth over the same area. In New Zealand, as in Hawaii, men
tell the story of Maui's fishing and the theft of fire.[1] A close
comparative study of the tales from each group should reveal local
characteristics, but for our purpose the Polynesian race is one, and its
common stock of tradition, which at the dispersal and during the
subsequent periods of migration was carried as common treasure-trove of
the imagination as far as New Zealand on the south and Hawaii on the
north, and from the western Fiji to the Marquesas on the east, repeats
the same adventures among similar surroundings and colored by the same
interests and desires. This means, in the first place, that the race
must have developed for a long period of time in some common home of
origin before the dispersal came, which sent family groups migrating
along the roads of ocean after some fresh land for settlement;[2] in the
second place, it reflects a period of long voyaging which brought about
interchange of culture between far distant groups.[3] As the Crusades
were the great exchange for west European folk stories, so the days of
the voyagers were the Polynesian crusading days. The roadway through the
seas was traveled by singing bards who carried their tribal songs as a
race heritage into the new land of their wanderings. Their inns for
hostelry were islets where the boats drew up along the beach and the
weary oarsmen grouped about the ovens where their hosts prepared cooked
food for feasting. Tales traveled thus from group to group with a
readiness which only a common tongue, common interests, and a common
delight could foster, coupled with the constant competition of family
rivalries.

Hawaiian tradition reflects these days of wandering.[4] A chief vows to
wed no woman of his own group but only one fetched from "the land of
good women." An ambitious priest seeks overseas a leader of divine
ancestry. A chief insulted by his superior leads his followers into
exile on some foreign shore. There is exchange of culture-gifts,
intermarriage, tribute, war. Romance echoes with the canoe song and the
invocation to the confines of Kahiki[5]--this in spite of the fact that
intercourse seems to have been long closed between this northern group
and its neighbors south and east. When Cook put in first at the island
of Kauai, most western of the group, perhaps guided by Spanish charts,
perhaps by Tahitian navigators who had preserved the tradition of
ancient voyages,[6] for hundreds of years none but chance boats had
driven upon its shores.[7] But the old tales remained, fast bedded at
the foundation of Hawaiian imaginative literature. As now recited they
take the form of chants or of long monotonous recitals like the
_Laieikawai_, which take on the heightened form of poetry only in
dialogue or on occasions when the emotional stress requires set song.
Episodes are passed along, from one hero cycle to another, localities
and names vary, and a fixed form in matter of detail relieves the
stretch of invention; in fact, they show exactly the same phenomena of
fixing and reshaping, that all story-telling whose object is to please
exhibits in transference from mouth to mouth. Nevertheless, they are
jealously retentive of incident. The story-teller, generally to be found
among the old people of any locality, who can relate the legends as they
were handed down to him from the past is known and respected in the
community. We find the same story[8] told in New Zealand and in Hawaii
scarcely changed, even in name.



_Footnotes to Section II, 1: Polynesian Origin of Hawaiian Romance_

[Footnote 1: Bastian In Samoanische Schoepfungssage (p. 8) says:
"Oceanien (im Zusammenbegriff von Polynesien und Mikronesien)
repraesentirt (bei vorlaeufigem Ausschluss von Melanesien schon) einen
Flaechenraum, der alles Aehnliche auf dem Globus intellectualis weit
uebertrifft (von Hawaii bis Neu-Seeland, von der Oster-Insel bis zu den
Marianen), und wenn es sich hier um Inseln handelt durch Meeresweiten
getrennt, ist aus solch insularer Differenzirung gerade das Hilfsmittel
comparativer Methode geboten fuer die Induction, um dasselbe, wie
biologiseh sonst, hier auf psychologischem Arbeitsfelde zur Verwendung
zu bringen." Compare: Kraemer, p. 394; Finck, in Royal Scientific Society
of Goettingen, 1909.]

[Footnote 2: Lesson says of the Polynesian groups (I, 378): "On sait ...
que tous ont, pour loi civile et religieuse, la meme interdiction; que
leurs institutions, leurs ceremonies sont semblables; que leurs
croyances sont foncierement identiques; qu'ils ont le meme culte, les
memes coutumes, les memes usages principaux; qu'ils ont enfin les memes
moeurs et les memes traditions. Tout semble donc, a priori, annoncer
que, quelque soit leur eloignement les uns des autres, les Polynesiens
ont tire d'une meme source cette communaute d'idees et de langage;
qu'ils ne sont, par consequent, que les tribus disperses d'une meme
nation, et que ces tribus ne se sont separees qu'a une epoque ou la
langue et les idees politiques et religieuses de cette nation etaient
deja fixees."]

[Footnote 3: Compare: Stair, Old Samoa, p. 271; White, I, 176; Fison,
pp. 1, 19; Smith, Hawaiki, p. 123; Lesson, II, 207, 209; Grey, pp.
108-234; Baessler, Neue Suedsee-Bilder, p. 113; Thomson, p. 15.]

[Footnote 4: Lesson (II, 190) enumerates eleven small islands, covering
40 degrees of latitude, scattered between Hawaii and the islands to the
south, four showing traces of ancient habitation, which he believes to
mark the old route from Hawaii to the islands to the southeast.
According to Hawaiian tradition, which is by no means historically
accurate, what is called the second migration period to Hawaii seems to
have occurred between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries (dated from
the arrival of the high priest Paao at Kohala, Hawaii, 18 generations
before Kamehameha); to have come from the southeast; to have introduced
a sacerdotal system whose priesthood, symbols, and temple structure
persisted up to the time of the abandoning of the old faith in 1819.
Compare Alexander's History, ch. III; Malo, pp. 25, 323; Lesson, II,
160-169.]

[Footnote 5: _Kahiki_, in Hawaiian chants, is the term used to designate
a "foreign land" in general and does not refer especially to the island
of Tahiti in the Society Group.]

[Footnote 6: Lesson, II, 152.]

[Footnote 7: Ibid., 170.]

[Footnote 8: Ibid., 178.]




2. POLYNESIAN COSMOGONY

In theme the body of Polynesian folk tale is not unlike that of other
primitive and story-loving people. It includes primitive
philosophy--stories of cosmogony and of heroes who shaped the earth;
primitive annals--migration stories, tales of culture heroes, of
conquest and overrule. There is primitive romances--tales of
competition, of vengeance, and of love; primitive wit--of drolls and
tricksters; and primitive fear in tales of spirits and the power of
ghosts. These divisions are not individual to Polynesia; they belong to
universal delight; but the form each takes is shaped and determined by
the background, either of real life or of life among the gods, familiar
to the Polynesian mind.

The conception of the heavens is purely objective, corresponding, in
fact, to Anaxagoras's sketch of the universe. Earth is a plain, walled
about far as the horizon, where, according to Hawaiian expression, rise
the confines of Kahiki, _Kukulu o Kahiki_.[1] From this point the
heavens are superimposed one upon the other like cones, in number
varying in different groups from 8 to 14; below lies the underworld,
sometimes divided into two or three worlds ruled by deified ancestors
and inhabited by the spirits of the dead, or even by the gods[2]--the
whole inclosed from chaos like an egg in a shell.[3] Ordinarily the gods
seem to be conceived as inhabiting the heavens. As in other mythologies,
heaven and the life the gods live there are merely a reproduction or
copy of earth and its ways. In heaven the gods are ranged by rank; in
the highest heaven dwells the chief god alone enjoying his supreme right
of silence, _tabu moe_; others inhabit the lower heavens in gradually
descending grade corresponding to the social ranks recognized among the
Polynesian chiefs on earth. This physical world is again the prototype
for the activities of the gods, its multitudinous manifestations
representing the forms and forces employed by the myriad gods in making
known their presence on earth. They are not these forms themselves, but
have them at their disposal, to use as transformation bodies in their
appearances on earth, or they may transfer them to their offspring on
earth. This is due to the fact that the gods people earth, and from them
man is descended. Chiefs rank, in fact, according to their claim to
direct descent from the ancient gods.[4]

Just how this came about is not altogether uniformly explained. In the
Polynesian creation story[5] three things are significant--a monistic
idea of a god existing before creation;[6] a progressive order of
creation out of the limitless and chaotic from lower to higher forms,
actuated by desire, which is represented by the duality of sex
generation in a long line of ancestry through specific pairs of forms
from the inanimate world--rocks and earth, plants of land and sea
forms--to the animate--fish, insects, reptiles, and birds;[7] and the
special analysis of the soul of man into "breath," which constitutes
life; "feeling," located in the heart; "desire" in the intestines; and
"thought" out of which springs doubt--the whole constituting _akamai_ or
"knowledge." In Hawaii the creation story lays emphasis upon progressive
sex generation of natural forms.