At the gateways of the day

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Tales & Legends of Hawaii · Volume I

At the Gateways of the Day

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Tales & Legends of Hawaii

Volume I. At the Gateways of the Day.

Volume II. The Bright Islands. (In Preparation.)

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At the
Gateways of the Day

by Padraic Colum
with illustrations by Juliette May Fraser

New Haven
Published for The Hawaiian Legend & Folklore Commission by the Yale University Press
London · Humphrey Milford · Oxford University Press
1924

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Copyright 1924 by Yale University Press

Printed in the United States of America

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I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME
TO THE MEMBERS OF
THE HAWAIIAN LEGEND AND FOLKLORE COMMISSION

JOHN R. GALT
EDNA J. HILL
MARY S. LAWRENCE
EMMA AHUENA D. TAYLOR

AND TO FIVE KAMA AINA WHO HELPED ME

JOSEPH S. EMERSON
WILLIAM HYDE RICE
JULIE JUDD SWANZY
THOMAS G. THRUM
WILLIAM DRAKE WESTERVELT [[vii]]

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Table of Contents.

[[ix]]

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List of Illustrations.

[[xi]]

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Helps to Pronunciation.

There are three simple rules which practically control Hawaiian pronunciation: (1) Pronounce each vowel. (2) Never allow a consonant to close a syllable. (3) Give the vowels the following values:

[[xiii]]

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Introduction.

If you draw a line from the tip of New Zealand to the top of the Hawaiian Islands, you will be able to indicate the true Polynesian area. On the islands towards the Malay Peninsula there is a mixed people who show the Papuan strain that is in them. They are the Melanesians. On the American side of the line there is a singularly homogeneous people who are of a type like to our own. They are the Polynesians. We have been able to pay ourselves the compliment of admiring them ever since the chronicler of Mendaña’s voyages looked upon the men and women of the Marquesas and found that “they had beautiful faces and the most promising animation of countenance; and were in all things so becoming that the pilot-mayor Quiros affirmed nothing in his life caused him so much regret as leaving such fine creatures to be lost in that country.”[1]

And yet the Polynesians, so like us physically, have in their romances none of the familiar veins that one can discover in, let us say, the folk-tales of the darker peoples in the lands around India. I take up Studies in Religion, Folk-lore, and Custom in North Borneo and the Malay Peninsula,[2] and I strike at once into: [[xiv]]

Now the Raja had given it out that whoever could remove the dragon’s head should marry his daughter, who was shut up in an inner room and enclosed by a seven-fold fence of ivory; but nobody could do it, for the dragon’s head was as big as a mountain.

This is from a folk-tale told amongst the aboriginal tribes of the Malay Peninsula. And when I read the opening of another tale I am in an imaginative land so familiar that I know every turn and track in it.—

“Oh,” said Serunggal, “it is no use my stopping here. I had better go and marry a Raja’s daughter.”

The tale goes on, and we have the Raja setting the adventurous youth three tasks, just as the King or the Enchanter sets the youth three tasks in a story that has been told in every village in Ireland and Serbia, in Spain and Sweden, in Russia and Italy; in a story that was given literary form in classic Greece in Jason and Medea, and in mediæval Wales in Kulhwch and Olwen. And this tale of Serunggal and the Raja’s daughter belongs to one of the dark tribes of Borneo.

There are animal helpers in this particular tale, just as there are animal helpers in the ancient Greek folk-tale of Cupid and Psyche. Indeed, the stories belonging to Borneo and the Malay Peninsula are well filled with animals—turtles and deer, elephants and ant-eaters; they might be the material out of which Rudyard Kipling made his unforgettable Jungle Book and his Just-So Stories.

In Polynesia we find no romance that is based on formulæ familiar to us. Only occasionally does a helping creature appear. There are practically no animal stories, [[xv]]for the sufficient reason that the Polynesian did not have opportunities for forming a wide animal acquaintanceship. He brought the pig and the dog to the Islands with him; and the shark and the turtle, the owl and the plover, were the only creatures that aroused an interest in him. Even the way of counting things is changed when we get into Polynesian romance: instead of three, seven, and nine, we have four, eight, and sixteen for the cabalistic numbers.

And yet, as all human desire is the same, and as human mentality compels a certain sequence of incident, and there seem to be patterns in incident that all human beings find it delightful to work out, the Polynesian stories have the elements and the combination of elements that make fine narrative. Often the Polynesian story-teller rediscovers a formula that we have used to make a memorable tale. Thus, in the present collection, the daughter of the King of Ku-ai-he-lani will recall Cinderella, and the story of Au-ke-le will recall the story of the Irish hero Oisin and all the other stories of men who travelled far and returned to their own land; it will remind us of Odysseus and Rip Van Winkle.

In the folk-romance and in the mythological stories of Europe there are places that may not be entered, and there are women whom a man must not approach. There is Blue Beard’s Chamber; there is Danaë, and there is the Eithlinn of Celtic mythology. Polynesian romance has places that may not be entered, and women who must not be approached by men. And it has these instances in almost every story. Indeed, without the guarded maiden and the forbidden place a Polynesian story-teller would find it difficult to carry on. And one knows that when he was [[xvi]]dealing with one or the other he was dealing with the life around him: the place was tapu,[3] the maiden was tapu. And the place or the maiden was tapu simply because a king or a chief with the privilege of declaring tapu had so declared it. When we read the story of Ka-we-lu in The Arrow and the Swing, or of Kama in The Story of Ha-le-ma-no and the Princess Kama, we can easily see how, as the simplicity of tapu was forgotten, the maiden would be given a fantastic security like that of Danaë in her brazen tower, or like that of Eithlinn in her inaccessible island, and we can see how motives would be invented for keeping her apart: Danaë’s son and Eithlinn’s son are destined to slay their grandfathers. Every race has had tapu. But the Polynesians held to it and made it their single discipline. In these Polynesian stories we are at the very beginning of a romance that for Europeans has grown to be fraught with magic and mystery.

I spent the months of January, February, March, and April of 1923 in the Hawaiian Islands. I went there under the following circumstances: The Hawaiian Legislature had formed a Commission on Myth and Folk-lore; the function of the Commission was to have a survey made of the stories that had been collected and that belonged to [[xvii]]myth and folk-lore of the Islands, and to have them made over into stories for children—primarily for the children of the Hawaiian Islands. By an arrangement made between the Commission and the Yale University Press, I was invited to make the survey and to reshape the stories.

I learned something of the language; I sought out those who still had the tradition of Hawaiian romance and who could recite it in the traditional way; I made a study of all the material that had been collected; I placed myself in the hands of the very distinguished group of Polynesian scholars that is in Honolulu. Quite early in my researches I came to the conclusion that my work should be based on the Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-lore, published by the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History, in Honolulu, and I made it my main task to understand the background of the stories given in that collection, and to hear as many of them as possible from the lips of the surviving custodians of the Polynesian tradition in Hawaii.

I found in the Hawaiian Islands conditions that are lamentably like the conditions in certain European countries where separate and interesting cultures are being pushed aside by this or that culture that is politically and commercially important. In Hawaii there is a great breach in the native tradition: I have been in houses where a grandmother or grandfather knew traditional Hawaiian poems (mele) and could chant them in the traditional way, while a son or daughter would be able to translate them, but not able to chant them, and a grandchild would be able neither to chant the poems nor translate them. Once, I remember, in such a house, I went to see what a little girl, [[xviii]]the granddaughter of a lady who had chanted mele to me for about an hour, was studying. This child had not allowed herself to be interrupted either by the chanting of her grandmother or by the translating that her father did for me; she was bent on mastering a lesson in a book that she kept before her—an American school geography. “Stockholm is the capital of Sweden, Vienna is the capital of Austria,” was one of the items that had kept her absorbed.

I discovered that of the stories which I knew from the Fornander Collection, few lived in the memory of the generations at present in the Islands. On the Island of Maui I met a distinguished Hawaiian lady who had been at the court of King Kalakaua, and who, in her youth, had been a trained story-teller. She tried to give me some of the stories that belonged to her repertoire. But no sooner had she begun than she declared that she was no longer familiar with the language in which the stories were told—they were in the idiom of the Alii or the Chiefs, an idiom that she had not used since her days at court.

I heard many stories told, some by men, some by women. One of the best story-tellers that I came across was a young man whom I met on the Island of Molokai. His father was Chinese, and he had learnt the stories from his grandmother. He told me several stories; one of them was the story of the rescue of Hina by her son Kana, a story given in Fornander, and evidently belonging to the folk.

What impressed me most in these recitals was the gesture of the story-teller. Every feature, every finger of the man or woman becomes alive, becomes dramatic, as the recital is entered on. The gesture of the Hawaiian makes [[xix]]the telling of a story a dramatic entertainment. Scholars have written of the long and monotonous stories told in the old days in Hawaii. The stories were long, but the gesture of the story-teller must have saved them from an unrelieved monotony. I was made to recall again and again Melville’s description of an entertainment given him by a genial Marquesan youth; it is a description that gives the spirit in which the unspoiled Polynesian dramatizes his moods and his reactions. Says Melville: “Upon my signifying my desire that he should pluck me the young fruit of some particular tree, the handsome savage, throwing himself into a sudden attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of the request. Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on his countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will, and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his arm, as though endeavoring to reach the fruit from the ground where he stands. As if defeated in this childish attempt, he now sinks to the earth despondingly, beating his breast in well-acted despair; and then, starting to his feet all at once, and throwing back his head, raises both hands, like a school boy about to catch a falling ball. And continuing this for a moment or two, as if in expectation that the fruit was going to be tossed down to him by some good spirit on the tree-top, he turns wildly round in another fit of despair, and scampers off to a distance of thirty or forty yards. Here he remains a while, eyeing the tree, the very picture of misery; but the next moment, receiving, as it were, a flash of inspiration, he rushes again towards it, and clasping both [[xx]]arms about the trunk, with one elevated a little above the other, he presses the soles of his feet close together against the tree, extending his legs from it until they are nearly horizontal, and his body becomes doubled into an arch; then, hand over hand and foot after foot he rises from the earth with steady rapidity, and almost before you are aware of it, has gained the cradled and embowered nest of nuts, and with boisterous glee flings the fruit to the ground.” Imagine this spontaneous gesture applied to the telling of a story, every incident of which gives rise to gesture. But the gesture in the story-recital was not merely spontaneous; it was trained, as was the gesture in the hula or Polynesian ballet. Dr. Nathaniel Emerson has a chapter on gesture in his Unwritten Literature of Hawaii, and he gives this instance amongst others: “To indicate death, the death of a person, the finger-tips, placed in apposition, are drawn away from each other with a sweeping gesture and at the same time lowered till the palms face the ground. In this case also we find diversity. One old man, well acquainted with hula matters, being asked to signify in pantomimic fashion ‘The king is sick,’ went through the following motions: He first pointed upward, to indicate the heaven-born one, the king; then he brought his hands to his body and threw his face into a painful grimace. To indicate the death of the king he threw his hands upward towards the sky, as if to signify a removal by flight.”

This unconstrained, dramatic gesture is being lost. There is no longer a school for gesture in the hula. And the Hawaiian is checking his movements towards gesture. It used to be said: “Tie an Hawaiian’s hands and he can’t [[xxi]]talk.” The older men and women still have that wonderful command of their features and their hands—a command that made them the greatest ballet-performers that the world, I believe, has ever had—but the younger generation feel that to use gesture is to be rustic, to be “Kanaka.”.

There is still, amongst the Hawaiians who live in the old Polynesian way, in villages along the beaches, with the taro patches near, a great treasury of poetry and native lore. But the newspaper and the victrola are taking up the time and the interest that used to be devoted to poetry, traditional games, riddles, and the like. I have been in cottages where the people still sit or lie on their mats on the floor, ignoring tables, chairs, and beds, and where they eat with their fingers, lifting the poi out of the common bowl. In such houses I have found a real scholarship, a delight in poetry, and the possession of such a quantity of it as would put to shame a cultivated American, Englishman, or Frenchman. But even in such houses I was aware that the tradition was passing. Sitting on the floor in one such house, around a petroleum lamp also on the floor, I have spelled out news items in an Hawaiian newspaper that told of the French in the Ruhr and preparations for elections in Ireland.

The world surges in on the Hawaiian Islands. And the Hawaiian can no longer give himself solely to the tradition that bound him to the valleys and the mountains, and that knit him to Wakea and Papa, who begat and brought forth the islands and the men and women upon them. That separate tradition, which for thousands of years he lived by, is being broken up, as the surge breaks up the lava on [[xxii]]his coast. The Hawaiian who, at the time when the Americans were making their declaration of independence, was still working with tools of stone, knowing nothing of metals, of pottery, of the loom, and knowing of no animal larger than a dog or a pig, has now to take some account of the continents.

With one exception the titles in this collection cover stories that are Hawaiian in the sense that they were given their shape upon the Hawaiian Islands. That exception is The Seven Great Deeds of Ma-ui. Although the scene of the demi-god’s adventures is Hawaiian, I have used incidents related of him in other Polynesian islands—in New Zealand, Samoa, and the lesser islands. I have treated Ma-ui, not as an Hawaiian, but as the Pan-Polynesian hero that he is. With this exception the stories are all out of the Hawaiian tradition, or rather out of the Polynesian tradition as it has been shaped in Hawaii.

And the stories are mainly taken from that treasure house of Hawaiian lore, the Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-lore, which form Volumes IV–VI of the Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Honolulu, published 1916–1919. I have gone outside the Fornander Collection in several instances. The Seven Great Deeds of Ma-ui comes out of Mr. Westervelt’s valuable book, Ma-ui the Demi-God; the stories of the Me-ne-hu-ne come out of Mr. Thrum’s Stories of the Menehunes and Mr. Rice’s Hawaiian Legends; and I have drawn the story about Hina, the Woman of Lalo-hana, from David Malo’s Hawaiian Antiquities, and the story about the [[xxiii]]Shark-god from an old publication of the Islands, The Maile Quarterly. But it is the Fornander Collection that has given a cast to this book, and I must now give a brief account of it.

Abraham Fornander, the author of The Polynesian Race, lived on the Islands for over forty years. He edited a journal called The Polynesian, and he was Superintendent of Public Instruction on the Islands in 1865–1866. He had married an Hawaiian lady, and he was a strong partisan of the native race.

The theory which he expounds in The Polynesian Race is that the Polynesian people carried with them into the islands of the Pacific a culture and a set of ideas that connect them with the East Indians—with the pre-Sanscrit culture and with an Arabian culture that touched both the Hebrews and the East Indians. There is no reason to take this theory into account now. The important thing is that Abraham Fornander, in order to substantiate it, made an appeal to the traditions that were then current amongst the natives of Hawaii.

At that time, over forty years ago, there was considerable native scholarship. Haleole, who made an attempt to found a native literature with his romance Laieikawai, was writing and publishing. The Mission School in Lahainaluna on the Island of Maui had become a sort of Hawaiian university. Abraham Fornander had the good sense to appeal to native scholars, and he was able to get the best of them to interest themselves in his project of collecting all the native lore that could throw a light on the migrations of the Polynesian people. The Hawaiian monarchy [[xxiv]]was then in undisputed existence; native institutions were still vigorous; everywhere there were men and women whose memories were stocked with the historical traditions and the romances of Hawaii.

With the help of a corps of native scholars a great deal of the surviving tradition of Hawaii was collected by Fornander. Some of it was published in the Hawaiian newspapers of the time, but no extensive publication was given to it. The manuscripts were kept together; then, on the death of Abraham Fornander in 1887, the collection was acquired by Charles R. Bishop, the husband of Bernice Pauahi, an Hawaiian royalty whose estate went to the foundation of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History in Honolulu.

Forty years after it had been got together, the publication of the material was begun by the Bishop Museum. That was in 1916. The volumes have appeared under the editorship of that veteran Hawaiian scholar, Mr. Thomas Thrum, with the Hawaiian text on one page and the English translation by Mr. John Wise on the other. It is Mr. Wise’s translations that have furnished me with the bulk of the material for this book.

Although the stories are described in the Museum publications as folk-lore, I doubted from the time of my first reading of them that they were folk-lore in the strict sense of the word; that is, I doubted their coming out of an unlearned and popular tradition. The greater number of them seemed to me to be deliberate compositions intended for a rather select audience. And then I found that a great master of Hawaiian tradition, Mr. William [[xxv]]Hyde Rice, favored this opinion. In the Introduction to his Hawaiian Legends[4] it is said:

Mr. Rice’s theory as to the origin of these legends is based on the fact that in the old days, before the discovery of the Islands by Captain Cook, there were bards and story-tellers, either itinerant or attached to the courts of the chiefs, similar to the minstrels and tale-tellers of mediæval Europe. These men formed a distinct class, and lived only at the courts of the high chiefs. Accordingly, their stories were heard by none except those people attached to the service of the chiefs. This accounts for the loss of many legends, in later years, as they were not commonly known. These bards or story-tellers sometimes used historical incidents or natural phenomena for the foundation of their stories, which were handed down from generation to generation. Other legends were simply fabrications of the imagination, in which the greatest “teller of tales” was awarded the highest place in the chief’s favor. All these elements, fiction combined with fact, and shrouded in the mist of antiquity, came, by repetition, to be more or less believed as true. This class of men were skillful in the art of the “apo”—that is, “catching,” literally, or memorizing instantly at the first hearing. One man would recite or chant for two or three hours at a stretch, and when he had finished, his auditor would start at the beginning of the chant and go through the whole mele or story without missing or changing a word. These trained men received through their ears as we receive through our eyes, and in that way the ancient Hawaiians had a spoken literature much as we have a written one.

And as to the substance of this spoken literature, Miss Martha Warren Beckwith, who has made by her edition of Haleole’s romance of Laieikawai a valuable contribution to the knowledge of Polynesian poetry and romance, states [[xxvi]]that the traditional Hawaiian romance belongs to no isolated group but to the whole Polynesian area. “We find,” she says, “the same story told in New Zealand and Hawaii, scarcely changed, even in name.” Miss Beckwith thinks that the bulk of Hawaiian romance consists of stories about the demi-gods—beings descended from the gods, or adopted or endowed by them. These legendary tales reflect actual Polynesian conditions—“Gods and men are, in fact, to the Polynesian mind, one family under different forms, the gods having superior control over certain phenomena, a control which they can impart to their offspring on earth.… The supernatural blends with the natural in exactly the same way as to the Polynesian mind gods relate themselves to men, facts about one being regarded as, even though removed to the heavens, quite as objective as those which belong to the other, and being employed to explain social customs and physical appearances in actual experience.”

The bulk of the stories in the present volume are founded, then, on Polynesian literature rather than on Polynesian folk-lore. They are based on the compositions of men who were trained in the handling of character and incident. There are stories in the volume that obviously belong to folk-lore, however. The stories of the Me-ne-hu-ne, which are not given in the Fornander Collection, but are taken from the work of Mr. Thrum and Mr. Rice, are folk-lore, I believe. The stories of Ma-ui the demi-god are folk-lore, too. The story of Hina coming from the land under the sea, and the other story of her going to the moon and becoming the woman in the moon, undoubtedly belong to Polynesian folk-lore. [[xxvii]]

I do not believe that the Polynesian language, with its sounds that seem to belong to the forest and the sea, is going or that it has to go. Indeed, there may be a Polynesian revival similar to the national revivals which we have seen in European countries; the Polynesian, with tragic exceptions in the case of the people of the Marquesas, is coming back. He has turned the corner; our diseases no longer threaten his very existence. And yet, although his language and parts of his culture will probably remain for many generations, his children, if they are in the American territory of Hawaii, and if they are to read the romances of old Hawaii, will have to read them in English. For them, and for the neo-Hawaiian children—the children of American, British, Portuguese, Japanese, and Chinese parents, mixed or unmixed with Hawaiian blood—these stories have been reshaped. I have had to condense, expand, heighten, subdue, rearrange—in a word, I have had to retell the stories, using the old romances as material for wonder-stories. The old stories were not for children; they gave an image of life to kings and soldiers, to courtiers and to ruling women. As in all stories not originally intended for children, much has had to be suppressed in retelling them for a youthful audience.

And retelling them has meant that I have had to find a new form for the stories. The form that I choose to give them is that of the European folk-tale.

In Hawaiian romance there is a feeling that is rare in any body of popular European romance—a feeling for the beauty of nature, for flowers and trees, the aspect of the clouds, the look of the sea, the sight of mountains, for the beauty of the rainbow and the waterfall. And part of the [[xxviii]]delight in retelling these stories is in recalling the beauties of places that are beautifully named. To be true in any measure to the originals these stories of my retelling should have in them the rainbow and the waterfall, the volcano, the forest, the surf as it foams over the reef of coral. In the hula or Hawaiian ballet, and in the poetry that is related to the hula, there is, as Dr. Nathaniel Emerson has observed, always an idyllic feeling. This idyllic feeling pervades Hawaiian romance also. The scene of many of the stories, when not laid in lands that are frankly mythical, is laid in an Hawaiian Arcadia. And how memorable these lands are!—Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country that Supports the Heavens, and Pali-uli, the easeful land that the gods have since hidden. Who would not roam through these lands with those who first told of them and who first heard of them—the gracious and vivid children of Wakea and Papa?

PADRAIC COLUM. [[1]]

[1] Quoted by Melville in Typee, Chapter XXV. The chronicle of de Figeroas’s voyage—the voyage by which the Marquesas were discovered and the Polynesians looked upon for the first time by European man—was published in Madrid, according to Melville, in 1613. Mendaña’s voyage was made in 1595. [↑]

[2] By Ivor H. N. Evans, M.A., Cambridge University Press, 1923. [↑]

[3] Written kapu in Hawaiian and taboo by the mariners who came first amongst the Polynesians. I have been instructed to write the word tapu. Its meaning is not merely “forbidden”: it means “sacred,” “inviolate,” “belonging to the gods.” In the four stories in the present collection where tapu is in operation I have made no attempt to explain its significance; I have merely said that it was forbidden to go to that place or go near that person. [↑]

[4] Published by the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History, 1923. [↑]

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The Boy Pu-nia and the King of the Sharks.

On one side of the Island there lived a great shark: Kai-ale-ale he was named; he was the King of the Sharks of that place, and he had ten sharks under him. He lived near a cave that was filled with lobsters. But no one dared to dive down, and go into that cave, and take lobsters out of it, on account of Kai-ale-ale and the ten sharks he had under him; they stayed around the cave night and day, and if a diver ventured near they would bite him and devour him.

There was a boy named Pu-nia, whose father had been killed by the sharks. Now after his father had been killed, there was no one to catch fish for Pu-nia and his mother; they had sweet potatoes to eat, but they never had any fish to eat with them. Often Pu-nia heard his mother say that she wished she had a fish or lobster to eat with the sweet potatoes. He made up his mind that they should have lobsters.

He came above the cave where the lobsters were. Looking down he saw the sharks—Kai-ale-ale and his ten sharks; they were all asleep. While he was watching them, they wakened up. Pu-nia pretended that he did not know that the sharks had wakened. He spoke loudly so that they would hear him, and he said: “Here am I, Pu-nia, and I am going into [[2]]the cave to get lobsters for myself and my mother. That great shark, Kai-ale-ale, is asleep now, and I can dive to the point over there, and then go into the cave; I will take two lobsters in my hands, and my mother and I will have something to eat with our sweet potatoes.” So Pu-nia said, speaking loudly and pretending that he thought the sharks were still asleep.

Said Kai-ale-ale, speaking softly to the other sharks: “Let us rush to the place where Pu-nia dives, and let us devour him as we devoured his father.” But Pu-nia was a very cunning boy and not at all the sort that could be caught by the stupid sharks. He had a stone upon his hand while he was speaking, and he flung it towards the point that he said he was going to dive to. Just as soon as the stone struck the water the sharks made a rush to the place, leaving the cave of the lobsters unguarded. Then Pu-nia dived. He went into the cave, took two lobsters in his hands, and came up on the place that he had spoken from before.

He shouted down to the sharks: “Here is Pu-nia, and he has come back safely. He has two lobsters, and he and his mother have something to live on. It was the first shark, the second shark, the third shark, the fourth shark, the fifth shark, the sixth shark, the seventh shark, the eighth shark, the ninth shark, the tenth shark—it was the tenth shark, the one with the thin tail, that showed Pu-nia what to do.” [[3]]

When the King of the Sharks, Kai-ale-ale, heard this from Pu-nia, he ordered all the sharks to come together and stay in a row. He counted them, and there were ten of them, and the tenth one had a thin tail. “So it was you, Thin Tail,” he said, “that told the boy Pu-nia what to do. You shall die.” Then, according to the orders of Kai-ale-ale, the thin-tailed shark was killed. Pu-nia called out to them, “You have killed one of your own kind.” With the two lobsters in his hands, he went back to his mother’s.

Pu-nia and his mother now had something to eat with their sweet potatoes. And when the lobsters were all eaten, Pu-nia went back to the place above the cave. He called out, the same as he had done the first time: “I can dive to the place over there and then slip into the cave, for the sharks are all asleep; I can get two lobsters for myself and my mother, so that we’ll have something to eat with our sweet potatoes.” Then he threw down a stone and made ready to dive to another point.

“Then Pu-nia dived … into the cave, took two lobsters in his hands, and came up on the place that he had spoken from.”

When the stone struck the water the sharks rushed over, leaving the cave unguarded. Then Pu-nia dived down and went into the cave. He took two lobsters in his hands and got back to the top of the water, and when he got to the place that he had spoken from before, he shouted down to the sharks: “It was the first shark, the second shark, the third shark, the fourth shark, the fifth shark, the [[4]]sixth shark, the seventh shark, the eighth shark, the ninth shark—it was the ninth shark, the one with the big stomach, that told Pu-nia what to do.”

Then the King of the Sharks, Kai-ale-ale, ordered the sharks to get into a line. He counted them, and he found that the ninth shark had a big stomach. “So it was you that told Pu-nia what to do,” he said; and he ordered the big-stomached shark to be killed. After that Pu-nia went home with his two lobsters, and he and his mother had something to eat with their sweet potatoes.

Pu-nia continued to do this. He would deceive the sharks by throwing a stone to the place that he said he was going to dive to; when he got the sharks away from the cave, he would dive down, slip in, and take two lobsters in his hands. And always, when he got to the top of the water, he would name a shark. “The first shark, the second shark, the third shark—the shark with the little eye, the shark with the grey spot on him—told Pu-nia what to do,” he would say; and each time he would get one of the sharks killed. He kept on doing this until only one of the sharks was left; this one was Kai-ale-ale, the King of the Sharks.

After that, Pu-nia went into the forest; he hewed out two hard pieces of wood, each about a yard long; then he took sticks for lighting a fire—the au-li-ma to rub with, and the au-na-ki to rub on; he got charcoal to burn as a fire, and he got food. He [[5]]put all into a bag, and he carried the bag down to the beach. He came above the cave that Kai-ale-ale was watching, and he said, speaking in a loud voice: “If I dive now, and if Kai-ale-ale bites me, my blood will come to the top of the water, and my mother will see the blood and will bring me back to life again. But if I dive down and Kai-ale-ale takes me into his mouth whole, I shall die and never come back to life again.” Kai-ale-ale was listening, of course. He said to himself: “No, I will not bite you, you cunning boy; I will take you into my mouth and swallow you whole, and then you will never come back to life again. I shall open my mouth wide enough to take you in. Yes, indeed, this time I will get you.”

Pu-nia dived, holding his bag. Kai-ale-ale opened his mouth wide and got Pu-nia into it. But as soon as the boy got within, he opened his bag and took out the two pieces of wood which he had hewn out in the forest. He put them between the jaws of the shark so that Kai-ale-ale was not able to close his jaws. With his mouth held open, Kai-ale-ale went dashing through the water.

Pu-nia was now inside the big shark; he took the fire-sticks out of his bag and rubbed them together, making a fire. He kindled the charcoal that he had brought, and he cooked his food at the fire that he had made. With the fire in his insides, the shark [[6]]could not keep still; he went dashing here and there through the ocean.

At last the shark came near the Island of Hawaii again. “If he brings me near the breakers, I am saved,” said Pu-nia, speaking aloud; “but if he takes me to the sand near where the grass grows, I shall die; I cannot be saved.” Kai-ale-ale, when he heard Pu-nia say this, said to himself: “I will not take him near the breakers; I will take him where the dry sand is, near the grass.” Saying this, he dashed in from the ocean and up to where the shrubs grew on the shore. No shark had ever gone there before; and when Kai-ale-ale got there, he could not get back again.

Then Pu-nia came out of the shark. He shouted out, “Kai-ale-ale, Kai-ale-ale, the King of the Sharks, has come to visit us.” And the people, hearing about their enemy Kai-ale-ale, came down to the shore with their spears and their knives and killed him. And that was the end of the ugly and wicked King of the Sharks.

Every day after that, Pu-nia was able to go down into the cave and get lobsters for himself and his mother. And all the people rejoiced when they knew that the eleven sharks that guarded the cave had been got rid of by the boy Pu-nia. [[7]]

[[Contents]]

The Seven Great Deeds of Ma-ui.

There is no hero who is more famous than Ma-ui. In all the Islands of the Great Ocean, from Kahiki-mo-e to Hawaii nei, his name and his deeds are spoken of. His deeds were many, but seven of them were very great, and it is about those seven great deeds that I shall tell you.

[[Contents]]

How Ma-ui won a place for himself in the House.

When Ma-ui, the last of her five sons, was born, his mother thought she would have no food for him. So she took him down to the shore of the sea, she cut off her hair and tied it around him, and she gave him to the waves. But Ma-ui was not drowned in the sea: first of all the jelly-fish came; it folded him in its softness, and it kept him warm while he floated on. And then the God of the Sea found the child and took charge of him: he brought him to his house and warmed and cherished him, and little Ma-ui grew up in the land where lived the God of the Sea.

But while he was still a boy he went back to his mother’s country. He saw his mother and his four brothers, and he followed them into a house; it was a house that all the people of the country were going into. He sat there with his brothers. And when his mother called her children to take them [[8]]home, she found this strange child with them. She did not know him, and she would not take him with the rest of the children. But Ma-ui followed them. And when his four brothers came out of their own house they found him there, and he played with them. At first they played hide-and-seek, but then they made themselves spears from canes and began throwing the spears at the house.

The slight spears did not go through the thatch of grass that was at the outside of the house. And then Ma-ui made a charm over the cane that was his spear—a charm that toughened it and made it heavy. He flung it again, and a great hole was made in the grass-thatch of the house. His mother came out to chastise the boy and drive him away. But when she stood at the door and saw him standing there so angry, and saw how he was able to break down the house with the throws of his spear, she knew in him the great power that his father had, and she called to him to come into the house. He would not come in until she had laid her hands upon him. When she did this his brothers were jealous that their mother made so much of this strange boy, and they did not want to have him with them. It was then that the elder brother spoke and said, “Never mind; let him be with us and be our dear brother.” And then they all asked him to come into the house.

The door-posts, Short Post and Tall Post, that had been put there to guard the house, would not [[9]]let him come in. Then Ma-ui lifted up his spear, and he threw it at Tall Post and overthrew him. He threw his spear again and overthrew Short Post. And after that he went into his mother’s house and was with his brothers. The overthrowing of the two posts that guarded the house was the first of the great deeds of Ma-ui.

In those days, say the people who know the stories of the old times, the birds were not seen by the men and women of the Islands. They flew around the houses, and the flutter of their wings was heard, and the stirring of the branches and the leaves as they were lit upon. Then there would be music. But the people who had never seen the birds thought that this was music made by gods who wanted to remain unseen by the people. Ma-ui could see the birds; he rejoiced in their brilliant colors, and when he called to them they would come and rest upon the branches around the place where he was; there they would sing their happiest songs to him.

There was a visitor who came from another land to the country that Ma-ui lived in. He boasted of all the wonderful things that were in his country, and it seemed to the people of Ma-ui’s land that they had nothing that was fine or that could be spoken about. Then Ma-ui called to the birds. They came and they made music on every side. The visitor who had boasted so much was made to wonder, and he [[10]]said that there was nothing in his country that was so marvellous as the music made by Ma-ui’s friends, the birds.

Then, that they might be honored by all, Ma-ui said a charm by which the birds came to be seen by men—the red birds, the i-i-wi and the aha-hani, and the yellow birds, the o-o and the mamo, and all the other bright birds. The delight of seeing them was equal to the delight of hearing the music that they made. Ever afterwards the birds were seen and heard, and the people all rejoiced in them. This Ma-ui did when he was still a boy growing up with his brothers and with his sister in his mother’s house. But this is not counted amongst the great deeds of Ma-ui the hero.

[[Contents]]

How Ma-ui lifted up the Sky.

Then he lifted up the sky to where it is now. This was the second of Ma-ui’s great deeds.

When he was growing up in his mother’s house the sky was so low that the trees touched it and had their leaves flattened out. Men and women burned with the heat because the sky was so near to them. The clouds were so close that there was much darkness on the earth. Something had to be done about it, and Ma-ui made up his mind that he would lift up the sky.

Somewhere he got a mark tattooed on his arm that was a magic mark and that gave him great [[11]]strength. Then he went to lift up the sky. And from some woman he got a drink that made his strength greater. “Give me to drink out of your gourd,” he said, “and I will push up the sky.” The woman gave him her gourd to drink from. Then Ma-ui pushed at the sky. He lifted it high, to where the trees have their tops now. He pushed at it again, and he put it where the mountains have their tops now. And then he pushed it to where it rests, on the tops of the highest mountains.

Then the men and women were able to walk about all over the earth, and they had light now and clear air. The trees grew higher and higher, and they grew more and more fruit. But even to this day their leaves are flattened out: it is from the time when their leaves were flattened against the sky.

When the sky was lifted up Ma-ui went and made a kite for himself. From his mother he got the largest and strongest piece of tapa-cloth she had ever made, and he formed it into a kite with a frame and cross-sticks of hau wood. The tail of the kite was fifteen fathoms long, and he got a line of olona vine for it that was twenty times forty fathoms in length. He started the kite. But it rose very slowly; the wind barely held it up.

Then the people said: “Look at Ma-ui! He lifted the sky up, and now he can’t fly a kite.” Ma-ui was made angry when he heard them say this: he drew the kite this way and that way, but still he was not [[12]]able to make it rise up. He cried out his incantation—

“Strong wind, come;

Soft wind, come”—

but still the kite would not rise.

Then he remembered that in the Valley of Wai-pio there was a wizard who had control of the winds. Over the mountains and down into the valley Ma-ui went. He saw the calabash that the wizard kept the winds in, and he asked him to loose them and direct them to blow along the river to the place where he was going to fly his kite. Then Ma-ui went back. He stood with his feet upon the rocks along the bank of the Wai-lu-ku River; he stood there braced to hold his kite, and where he stood are the marks of his feet to this day. He called out:

“O winds, winds of Wai-pio,

Come from the calabash—‘the Calabash of perpetual winds.’

O wind, O wind of Hilo,

Come quickly; come with power.”

The call that Ma-ui gave went across the mountains and down into the valley of Wai-pio. No sooner did he hear it than the wizard opened his calabash. The winds rushed out. They went into the bay of Hilo, and they dashed themselves against the water. The call of Ma-ui came to them: [[13]]

“O winds, winds of Hilo,

Hurry, hurry and come to me.”

The winds turned from the sea. They rushed along the river. They came to where Ma-ui stood, and then they saw the great, strange bird that he held.

They wanted to fall upon that bird and dash it up against the sky. But the great kite was strong. The winds flung it up and flung it this way and that way. But they could not carry it off or dash it against the sky as they wanted to.

Ma-ui rejoiced. How grand it was to hold a kite that the winds strove to tear away! He called out again:

“O winds, O winds of Hilo,

Come to the mountains, come.”

Then came the west wind that had been dashing up waves in the bay of Hilo. It joined itself with the north wind and the east wind, the two winds that had been tearing and pushing at Ma-ui’s kite. Now, although the kite was made of the strongest tapa, and although it had been strengthened in every cunning way that Ma-ui knew, it was flung here and flung there. Ma-ui let his line out; the kite was borne up and up and above the mountains. And now he cried out to the kite that he had made:

“Climb up, climb up

To the highest level of the heavens, [[14]]

To all the sides of the heavens.

Climb thou to thy ancestor,

To the sacred bird in the heavens.”

The three winds joined together, and now they made a fiercer attack upon Ma-ui’s kite. The winds tore and tossed it. Then the line broke in Ma-ui’s hands.

The winds flung the kite across the mountains. And then, to punish it for having dared to face the heavens, they rammed it down into the volcano, and stirred up the fires against it.

Then Ma-ui made for himself another kite. He flew it, and rejoiced in the flying of it, and all who saw him wondered at how high his kite went and how gracefully it bore itself in the heavens. But never again did he call upon the great winds to help him in his sport. Sometimes he would fasten his line to the black stones in the bed of the Wai-lu-ku River, and he would let the kite soar upward and range here and there. He knew by watching his soaring kite whether it would be dry and pleasant weather, and he showed his neighbors how they might know it. “Eh, neighbor,” one would say to another, “it is going to be dry weather; look how Ma-ui’s kite keeps in the sky.” They knew that they could go to the fields to work and spread out their tapa to dry, for as long as the kite soared the rain would not fall. [[15]]

Ma-ui learned what a strong pull the fierce winds had. He used to bring his kite with him when he went out on the ocean in his canoe. He would let it free; then, fastening his line to the canoe, he would let the wind that pulled the kite pull him along. By flying his kite he learned how to go more swiftly over the ocean in his canoe, and how to make further voyages than ever a man made before.

Nevertheless, his kite-flying is not counted amongst the great deeds of Ma-ui.

[[Contents]]

How Ma-ui fished up the Great Island.

Now, although Ma-ui had done deeds as great as these, he was not thought so very much of in his own house. His brothers complained that when he went fishing with them he caught no fish, or, if he drew one up, it was a fish that had been taken on a hook belonging to one of them, and that Ma-ui had managed to get tangled on to his own line. And yet Ma-ui had invented many things that his brothers made use of. At first they had spears with smooth heads on them: if they struck a bird, the bird was often able to flutter away, drawing from the spear-head that had pierced a wing. And if they struck through a fish, the fish was often able to wriggle away. Then Ma-ui put barbs upon his spear, and his spear-head held the birds and the fish. His brothers copied the spear-head that he made, and after that [[16]]they were able to kill and secure more birds and fish than ever before.

He made many things that they copied, and yet his brothers thought him a lazy and a shiftless fellow, and they made their mother think the same about him. They were the better fishermen—that was true; indeed, if there were no one but Ma-ui to go fishing, Hina-of-the-Fire, his mother, and Hina-of-the-Sea, his sister, would often go hungry.

At last Ma-ui made up his mind to do some wonderful fishing; he might not be able to catch the fine fish that his brothers desired—the u-lua and the pi-mo-e—but he would take up something from the bottom of the sea that would make his brothers forget that he was the lazy and the shiftless one.

He had to make many plans and go on many adventures before he was ready for this great fishing. First he had to get a fish-hook that was different from any fish-hook that had ever been in the world before. In those days fish-hooks were made out of bones—there was nothing else to make fish-hooks out of—and Ma-ui would have to get a wonderful bone to form into a hook. He went down into the underworld to get that bone.

He went to where his ancestress was. On one side she was dead and on the other side she was a living woman. From the side of her that was dead Ma-ui took a bone—her jaw-bone—and out of this bone he made his fish-hook. There was never a fish-hook [[17]]like it in the world before, and it was called “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” meaning “Made fast to the heavens.” He told no one about the wonderful fish-hook he had made for himself.

He had to get a different bait from any bait that had ever been used in the world before. His mother had sacred birds, the alae, and he asked her to give him one of them for bait. She gave him one of her birds.

Then Ma-ui, with his bait and his hook hidden, and with a line that he had made from the strongest olona vines, went down to his brothers’ canoe. “Here is Ma-ui,” they said when they saw him, “here is Ma-ui, the lazy and the shiftless, and we have sworn that we will never let him come again with us in our canoe.” They pushed out when they saw him coming; they paddled away, although he begged them to take him with them.

He waited on the beach. His brothers came back, and they had to tell him that they had caught no fish. Then he begged them to go back to sea again and to let him go this time in their canoe. They let him in, and they paddled off. “Farther and farther out, my brothers,” said Ma-ui; “out there is where the u-lua and the pi-mo-e are.” They paddled far out. They let down their lines, but they caught no fish. “Where are the u-lua and the pi-mo-e that you spoke of?” said his brothers to him. Still he told them [[18]]to go farther and farther out. At last they got tired with paddling, and they wanted to go back.

Then Ma-ui put a sail upon the canoe. Farther and farther out into the ocean they went. One of the brothers let down a line, and a great fish drew on it. They pulled. But what came out of the depths was a shark. They cut the line and let the shark away. The brothers were very tired now. “Oh, Ma-ui,” they said, “as ever, thou art lazy and shiftless. Thou hast brought us out all this way, and thou wilt do nothing to help us. Thou hast let down no line in all the sea we have crossed.”

It was then that Ma-ui let down his line with the magic hook upon it, the hook that was baited with the struggling alae bird. Down, down went the hook that was named “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” “Made fast to the heavens.” Down through the waters the hook and the bait went. Ka-uni ho-kahi, Old One Tooth, who holds fast the land to the bottom of the sea, was there. When the sacred bird came near him he took it in his mouth. And the magic hook that Ma-ui had made held fast in his jaws.

Ma-ui felt the pull upon the line. He fastened the line to the canoe, and he bade his brothers paddle their hardest, for now the great fish was caught. He dipped his own paddle into the sea, and he made the canoe dash on.

The brothers felt a great weight grow behind the canoe. But still they paddled on and on. [[19]]Weighty and more weighty became the catch; harder and harder it became to pull it along. As they struggled on Ma-ui chanted a magic chant, and the weight came with them.

“O Island, O great Island,

O Island, O great Island!

Why art thou

Sulkily biting, biting below?

Beneath the earth

The power is felt,

The foam is seen:

Come,

O thou loved grandchild

Of Kanaloa.”

On and on the canoe went, and heavier and heavier grew what was behind them. At last one of the brothers looked back. At what he saw he screamed out in affright. For there, rising behind them, a whole land was rising up, with mountains upon it. The brother dropped his paddle when he saw what had been fished up; as he dropped his paddle the line that was fastened to the jaws of old Ka-uni ho-kahi broke.

What Ma-ui fished up would have been a mainland, only that his brother’s paddle dropped and the line broke. Then only an island came up out of the water. If more land had come up, all the Islands that we know would have been joined in one. [[20]]

There are people who say that his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, was near at the time of that great fishing. They say she came floating out on a calabash. When Ma-ui let down the magic hook with their mother’s sacred bird upon it, Hina-of-the-Sea dived down and put the hook into the mouth of Old One Tooth, and then pulled at the line to let Ma-ui know that the hook was in his jaws. Some people say this, and it may be the truth. But whether or not, every one, on every Island in the Great Ocean, from Kahiki-mo-e to Hawaii nei, knows that Ma-ui fished up a great Island for men to live on. And this fishing was the third of Ma-ui’s great deeds.

[[Contents]]

How Ma-ui snared the Sun and made Him go more slowly across the Heavens.

The Sky had been lifted up, and another great Island had come from the grip of Old One Tooth and was above the waters. The world was better now for men and women to live in. But still there were miseries in it, and the greatest of these miseries was on account of the heedlessness of the Sun.

For the Sun in those days made his way too quickly across the world. He hurried so that little of his heat got to the plants and the fruits, and it took years and years for them to ripen. The farmers working on their patches would not have time in the light of a day to put down their crop into the [[21]]ground, so quickly the Sun would rush across the heavens, and the fishermen would barely have time to launch their canoes and get to the fishing grounds when the darkness would come on. And the women’s tasks were never finished. It was theirs to make the tapa-cloth: a woman would begin at one end of the board to beat the bark with her four-sided mallet, and she would be only at the middle of the board by the time the sunset came. When she was ready to go on with the work next day, the Sun would be already halfway across the heavens.

Ma-ui, when he was a child, used to watch his mother making tapa, and as he grew up he pitied her more and more because of all the toil and trouble that she had. She would break the branches from the ma-ma-ka trees and from the wau-ke trees and soak them in water until their bark was easily taken off. Then she would take off the outer bark, leaving the inner bark to be worked upon. She would take the bundles of the wet inner bark and lay them on the tapa-board and begin pounding them with little clubs. And then she would use her four-sided mallet and beat all the soft stuff into little thin sheets. Then she would paste the little sheets together, making large cloths. This was tapa—the tapa that it was every woman’s business in those days to make. As soon as morning reddened the clouds Ma-ui’s mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, would begin her task: she would begin beating the softened bark at [[22]]one end of the board, and she would be only in the middle of the board when the sunset came. And when she managed to get the tapa made she could never get it dried in a single day, so quickly the Sun made his way across the heavens. Ma-ui pitied his mother because of her unceasing toil.

He greatly blamed the Sun for his inconsiderateness of the people of the world. He took to watching the Sun. He began to know the path by which the Sun came over the great mountain Ha-le-a-ka-la (but in those days it was not called Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun, but A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the Sun). Through a great chasm in the side of this mountain the Sun used to come.

He told his mother that he was going to do something to make the Sun have more considerateness for the men and women of the world. “You will not be able to make him do anything about it,” she said; “the Sun always went swiftly, and he will always go swiftly.” But Ma-ui said that he would find a way to make the Sun remember that there were people in the world and that they were not at all pleased with the way he was going on.

Then his mother said: “If you are going to force the Sun to go more slowly you must prepare yourself for a great battle, for the Sun is a great creature, and he has much energy. Go to your grandmother who lives on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la,” said she (but it was called A-hele-a-ka-la then), “and [[23]]beg her to give you her counsel, and also to give you a weapon to battle with the Sun.”

So Ma-ui went to his grandmother who lived on the side of the great mountain. Ma-ui’s grandmother was the one who cooked the bananas that the Sun ate as he came through the great chasm in the mountain. “You must go to the place where there is a large wili-wili tree growing,” said his mother. “There the Sun stops to eat the bananas that your grandmother cooks for him. Stay until the rooster that watches beside the wili-wili tree crows three times. Your grandmother will come out then with a bunch of bananas. When she lays them down, do you take them up. She will bring another bunch out, and do you take that up too. When all her bananas are gone she will search for the one who took them. Then do you show yourself to her. Tell her that you are Ma-ui and that you belong to Hina-of-the-Fire.”

So Ma-ui went up the side of the mountain that is now called He-le-a-ka-la, but that then was called A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the Sun. He came to where a great wili-wili tree was growing. There he waited. The rooster crew three times, and then an old woman came out with a bunch of bananas. He knew that this was his grandmother. She laid the bananas down to cook them, and as she did so Ma-ui snatched them away. When she went to pick up the bunch she cried out, “Where are the bananas that I [[24]]have to cook for my Lord, the Sun?” She went within and got another bunch, and this one, too, Ma-ui snatched away. This he did until the last bunch of bananas that his grandmother had was taken.

She was nearly blind, so she could not find him with her eyes. She sniffed around, and at last she got the smell of a man. “Who are you?” she said. “I am Ma-ui, and I belong to Hina-of-the-Fire,” said he. “What have you come for?” asked his grandmother. “I have come to chastise the Sun and to make him go more slowly across the heavens. He goes so fast now that my mother cannot dry the tapa that she takes all the days of the year to beat out.”

The old woman considered all that Ma-ui said to her. She knew that he was a hero born, because the birds sang, the pebbles rumbled, the grass withered, the smoke hung low, the rainbow appeared, the thunder was heard, the hairless dogs were seen, and even the ants in the grass were heard to sing in his praise. She decided to give help to him. And she told him what preparations he was to make for his battle with the Sun.

First of all he was to get sixteen of the strongest ropes that ever were made. So as to be sure they were the strongest, he was to knit them himself. And he was to make nooses for them out of the hair of the head of his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea. When the [[25]]ropes were ready he was to come back to her, and she would show him what else he had to do.

Ma-ui made the sixteen ropes; he made them out of the strongest fibre, and his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, gave him the hair of her head to make into nooses. Then, with the ropes and the nooses upon them, Ma-ui went back to his grandmother. She told him where to set the nooses, and she gave him a magic stone axe with which to do battle with the Sun.

He set the nooses as snares for the Sun, and he dug a hole beside the roots of the wili-wili tree, and in that hole he hid himself. Soon the first ray of light, the first leg of the Sun, came over the mountain wall. It was caught in one of the nooses that Ma-ui had set. One by one the legs of the Sun came over the rim, and one by one they were caught in the nooses. One leg was left hanging down the side of the mountain: it was hard for the Sun to move that leg. At last this last leg came slowly over the edge of the mountain and was caught in the snare. Then Ma-ui gathered up the ropes and tied them to the great wili-wili tree.

When the Sun saw that his sixteen legs were held fast by the nooses that Ma-ui had set he tried to back down the mountain-side and into the sea again. But the ropes held him, and the wili-wili tree stood the drag of the ropes. The Sun could not get away. Then he turned all his burning strength upon [[26]]Ma-ui. They fought. The man began to strike at the Sun with his magic axe of stone; and never before did the Sun get such a beating. “Give me my life,” said the Sun. “I will give you your life,” said Ma-ui, “if you promise to go slowly across the heavens.” At last the Sun promised to do what Ma-ui asked him.

They entered into an agreement with each other, Ma-ui and the Sun. There should be longer days, the Sun making his course slower. But every six months, in the winter, the Sun might go as fast as he had been in the habit of going. Then Ma-ui let the Sun out of the snares which he had set for him. But, lest he should ever forget the agreement he had made and take to travelling swiftly again, Ma-ui left all the ropes and the nooses on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la, so that he might see them every day that he came across the rim of the mountain. And the mountain was not called A-hele-a-ka-la, the Rays of the Sun, any more, but Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun. After that came the saying of the people, “Long shall be the daily journey of the Sun, and he shall give light for all the peoples’ toil.” And Ma-ui’s mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, learned that she could pound on the tapa-board until she was tired, and the farmers could plant and take care of their crops, and the fishermen could go out to the deep sea and fish and come back, and the fruits and the plants got heat enough to make them ripen in their season. [[27]]

[[Contents]]

How Ma-ui won fire for Men.

Ma-ui’s mother must have known about fire and the use of fire; else why should she have been called Hina-of-the-Fire, and how did it come that her birds, the alae, knew where fire was hidden and how to make it blaze up? Hina must have known about fire. But her son had to search and search for fire. The people who lived in houses on the Islands did not know of it: they had to eat raw roots and raw fish, and they had to suffer the cold. It was for them that Ma-ui wanted to get fire; it was for them that he went down to the lower world, and that he went searching through the upper world for it.

In Kahiki-mo-e they have a tale about Ma-ui that the Hawaiians do not know. There they tell how he went down to the lower world and sought out his great-great-grandmother, Ma-hui’a. She was glad to see Ma-ui, of whom she had heard in the lower world; and when he asked her to give him fire to take to the upper world, she plucked a nail off her finger and gave it to him.

In this nail, fire burned. Ma-ui went to the upper world with it. But in crossing a stream of water he let the nail drop into it. And so he lost the fire that his great-great-grandmother had given him.

He went back to her again. And again Ma-hui’a plucked off a finger-nail and gave it to him. But when he went to the upper world and went to cross [[28]]the stream, he let this burning nail also drop into the water. Again he went back, and his great-great-grandmother plucked off a third nail for him. And this went on, Ma-ui letting the nails fall into the water, and Ma-hui’a giving him the nails off her fingers, until at last all the nails of all her fingers were given to him.

But still he went on letting the burning nails fall into the water that he had to cross, and at last the nails of his great-great-grandmother’s toes as well as the nails of her fingers were given to him—all but the nail on the last of her toes. Ma-ui went back to her to get this last nail. Then Ma-hui’a became blazing angry; she plucked the nail off, but instead of giving it to him she flung it upon the ground.

Fire poured out of the nail and took hold on everything. Ma-ui ran to the upper world, and Ma-hui’a in her anger ran after him. He dashed into the water. But now the forests were blazing, and the earth was burning, and the water was boiling. Ma-ui ran on, and Ma-hui’a ran behind him. As he ran he chanted a magic incantation for rain to come, so that the burning might be put out:

“To the roaring thunder;

To the great rain—the long rain;

To the drizzling rain—the small rain;

To the rain pattering on the leaves.

These are the storms, the storms [[29]]

Cause them to fall;

To pour in torrents.”

The rain came on—the long rain, the small rain, the rain that patters on the leaves; storms came, and rain in torrents. The fire that raged in the forests and burned on the ground was drowned out. And Ma-hui’a, who had followed him, was nearly-drowned by the torrents of rain. She saw her fire, all the fire that was in the lower and in the upper worlds, being quenched by the rain.

She gathered up what fragments of fire she could, and she hid them in barks of different trees so that the rain could not get at them and quench them. Ma-ui’s mother must have known where his great-great-grandmother hid the fire. If she did not, her sacred birds, the alae, knew it. They were able to take the barks of the trees and, by rubbing them together, to bring out fire.

In Hawaii they tell how Ma-ui and his brothers used to go out fishing every day, and how, as soon as they got far out to sea, they would see smoke rising on the mountain-side. “Behold,” they would say, “there is a fire. Whose can it be?” “Let us hasten to the shore and cook our fish at that fire,” another would say.

So, with the fish that they had caught, Ma-ui and his brothers would hasten to the shore. The swiftest of them would run up the mountain-side. But when [[30]]he would get to where the smoke had been, all he would see would be the alae scratching clay over burnt-out sticks. The alae would leave the place where they had been seen, and Ma-ui would follow them from place to place, hoping to catch them while their fire was lighted.

He would send his brothers off fishing, and he himself would watch for the smoke from the fire that the alae would kindle. But they would kindle no fire on the days that he did not go out in the canoe with his brothers. “We cannot have our cooked bananas to-day,” the old bird would say to the young birds, “for the swift son of Hina is somewhere near, and he would come upon us before we put out our fire. And remember that the guardian of the fire told us never to show a man where it is hidden or how it is taken out of its hiding place.”

Then Ma-ui understood that the bird watched for his going and that they made no fire until they saw him out at sea in his canoe. He knew that they counted the men that went out, and that if he was not in the number they did no cooking that day. Every time he went in the canoe he saw smoke rising on the mountain-side.

Then Ma-ui thought of a trick to play on them—on the stingy alae that would not give fire, but left men to eat raw roots and raw fish. He rolled up a piece of tapa, and he put it into the canoe, making it like a man. Then he hid near the shore. The brothers [[31]]went fishing, and the birds counted the figures in the canoe. “The swift son of Hina has gone fishing: we can have cooked bananas to-day.” “Make the fire, make the fire, until we cook our bananas,” said the young alae.

So they gathered the wood together, and they rubbed the barks, and they made the fire. The smoke rose up from it, and swift Ma-ui ran up the mountain-side. He came upon the flock of birds just as the old one was dashing water upon the embers. He caught her by the neck and held her.

“I will kill you,” he said, “for hiding fire from men.”

“If you kill me,” said the old alae, “there will be no one to show you how to get fire.”

“Show me how to get fire,” said Ma-ui, “and I will let you go.”

The cunning alae tried to deceive Ma-ui. She thought she would get him off his guard, that he would let go of her, and that she could fly away. “Go to the reeds and rub them together, and you will get fire,” she said.

Ma-ui went to the reeds and rubbed them together. But still he held the bird by the neck. Nothing came out of the reeds but moisture. He squeezed her neck. “If you kill me, there will be no one to tell you where to get fire,” said the cunning bird, still hoping to get him off his guard. “Go to the taro leaves and rub them together, and you will get fire.” [[32]]

Ma-ui held to the bird’s neck. He went to the taro leaves and rubbed them together, but no fire came. He squeezed her neck harder. The bird was nearly dead now. But still she tried to deceive the man. “Go to the banana stumps and rub them together, and you will get fire,” she said.

He went to the banana stumps and rubbed them together. But still no fire came. Then he gave the bird a squeeze that brought her near her death. She showed him then the trees to go to—the hau tree and the sandalwood tree. He took the barks of the trees and rubbed them, and they gave fire. And the sweet-smelling sandalwood he called “ili-aha”—that is, “fire bark”—because fire came most easily from the bark of that tree. With sticks from these trees Ma-ui went to men. He showed them how to get fire by rubbing them together. And never afterwards had men to eat fish raw and roots raw. They could always have fire now.

The first stick he lighted he rubbed on the head of the bird that showed him at last where the fire was hidden. And that is the reason why the alae, the mud-hen, has a red streak on her head to this day.

[[Contents]]

How Ma-ui overcame Kuna Loa the Long Eel.

Hina-of-the-Fire lived in a cave that the waters of the river streamed over, a cave that always had a beautiful rainbow glimmering across it. While her [[33]]sons were away no enemy could come to Hina in this cave, for the walls of it went up straight and smooth. And there at the opening of the cave she used to sit, beating out her tapa in the long days that came after Ma-ui had snared the Sun and had made him go more slowly across the heavens.

In the river below there was one who was an enemy to Hina. This was Kuna Loa, the Long Eel. Once Kuna Loa had seen Hina on the bank of the river, and he had wanted her to leave her cave and come to his abode. But Hina-of-the-Fire would not go near the Long Eel. Then he had gone to her, and he had lashed her with his tail, covering her with the slime of the river. She told about the insults he had given her, and Ma-ui drove the Long Eel up the river, where he took shelter in the deep pools. Ma-ui broke down the banks of the deep pools with thrusts of his spear, but Kuna Loa, the Long Eel, was still able to escape from him. Now Ma-ui had gone away, and his mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, kept within the cave, the smooth rock of which Kuna Loa could not climb.

The Long Eel came down the river. He saw Hina sitting in the mouth of the cave that had the rainbow glimmering across it, and he was filled with rage and a wish to destroy her. He took a great rock and he put it across the stream, filling it from bank to bank. Then he lashed about in the water in his [[34]]delight at the thought of what was going to happen to Hina.

She heard a deeper sound in the water than she had ever heard before as she sat there. She looked down and she saw that the water was nearer to the mouth of the cave than she had ever seen it before. Higher and higher it came. And then Hina heard the voice of Kuna Loa rejoicing at the destruction that was coming to her. He raised himself up in the water and cried out to her: “Now your mighty son cannot help you. I will drown you with the waters of the river before he comes back to you, Hina.”

And Hina-of-the-Fire cried “Alas, Alas,” as she watched the waters mount up and up, for she knew that Ma-ui and her other sons were far away, and that there was none to help her against Kuna Loa, the Long Eel. But, even as she lamented, something was happening to aid Hina. For Ma-ui had placed above her cave a cloud that served her—“Ao-opua,” “The Warning Cloud.” Over the cave it rose now, giving itself a strange shape: Ma-ui would see it and be sure to know by its sign that something dire was happening in his mother’s cave.

He was then on the mountain Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun. He saw the strangely shaped cloud hanging over her cave, and he knew that some danger threatened his mother, Hina-of-the-Fire. He dashed down the side of the mountain, bringing with [[35]]him the magic axe that his grandmother had given him for his battle with the Sun. He sprang into his canoe. With two strokes of his paddle he crossed the channel and was at the mouth of the Wai-lu-ku River. The bed of the river was empty of water, and Ma-ui left his canoe on the stones and went up towards Hina’s cave.

The water had mounted up and up and had gone into the cave, and was spilling over Hina’s tapa-board. She was lamenting, and her heart was broken with the thought that neither Ma-ui nor his brothers would come until the river had drowned her in her cave.

Ma-ui was then coming up the bed of the river. He saw the great stone across the stream, and he heard Kuna Loa rejoicing over the destruction that was coming to Hina in her cave. With one stroke of his axe he broke the rock across. The water came through the break. He struck the rocks and smashed them. The river flowed down once more, and Hina was safe in her cave.

Kuna Loa heard the crash of the axe on the rock, and he knew that Ma-ui had come. He dashed up the stream to hide himself again in the deep pools. Ma-ui showed his mother that she was safe, and then he went following the Long Eel.

Kuna Loa had gone into a deep pool. Ma-ui flung burning stones into the water of that pool, [[36]]making it boil up. Then Kuna Loa dashed into another pool. From pool to pool Ma-ui chased him, making the pools boil around him. (And there they boil to this day, although Kuna Loa is no longer there.) At last the Eel found a cave in the bottom of one of the pools, and he went and hid in it, and Ma-ui could not find him there, nor could the hot stones that Ma-ui threw into the water, making it boil, drive Kuna Loa out.

Hina thought she was safe from the Long Eel after that. She thought that his skin was so scalded by the boiling water that he had died in his cave. Down the river bank for water she would go, and sometimes she would stand on the bank all wreathed in flowers.

But one day, as she was standing on the bank of the river, Kuna Loa suddenly came up. Hina fled before him. The Eel was between her and her cave, and she could not get back to her shelter. She fled through the woods. And as she fled she shrieked out chants to Ma-ui: her chants went through the woods, and along the side of the mountain, and across the sea; they came at last up the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la, where her son Ma-ui was.

There were many people in the places that Hina fled through, but they could do nothing to help her against the Long Eel. He came swiftly after her. The people in the villages that they went through [[37]]stood and watched the woman and the Eel that pursued her.

Where would she go now? The Long Eel was close behind her. Then Hina saw a bread-fruit tree with great branches, and she climbed into it. Kuna Loa wound himself around the tree and came after her. But the branch that Hina was in was lifted up and up by the tree, and the Long Eel could not come to her.

And then Ma-ui came. He had dashed down the side of the mountain and had crossed the channel with two strokes of his paddles and had hurried along the track made by the Long Eel. Now he saw his mother in the branch that kept mounting up, and he saw Kuna Loa winding himself up after her. Ma-ui went into the tree. He struck the Eel a terrible blow and brought him to the ground. Then he sprang down and cut his head off. With other blows of his axe he cut the Eel all to pieces. He flung the head and the tail of Kuna Loa into the sea. The head turned into fish of many kinds, and the tail became the large conger eel of the sea. Other parts of the body turned into sea monsters of different kinds. And the blood of Kuna Loa, as it fell into the fresh water, became the common eels. The fresh and the salt water eels came into the world in this way, and Ma-ui, by killing the Long Eel, wrought the sixth of his great deeds. [[38]]

[[Contents]]

The Search that Ma-ui’s Brother made for his Sister Hina-of-the-Sea.

Ma-ui had four brothers, and each of them was named Ma-ui. The doer of the great deeds was known as “the skillful Ma-ui,” and the other four brothers were called “the forgetful Ma-uis.”

But there was one brother who should not have been called “forgetful.” He was the eldest brother, Ma-ui Mua, and he was sometimes called Lu-pe. He may have been forgetful about many things that the skillful Ma-ui took account of, but he was not forgetful of his sister, of Hina-of-the-Sea.

His great and skillful brother had set Hina-of-the-Sea wandering. She was married, and her husband often went on journeys with the skillful Ma-ui. And once Ma-ui became angry with him because he ate the bait that they had taken with them for fishing; he became angry with his sister’s husband, and in his anger he uttered a spell over him, and changed his form into the form of a dog.

When Hina-of-the-Sea knew that her husband was lost to her she went down to the shore and she chanted her own death-song:

“I weep, I call upon the steep billows of the sea,

And on him, the great, the ocean god;

The monsters, all now hidden,

To come and bury me,

Who am now wrapped in mourning. [[39]]

Let the waves wear their mourning, too,

And sleep as sleeps the dead.”

And after she had chanted this, she threw herself into the sea.

But the waves did not drown her. They carried her to a far land. There were no people there; according to the ancient chant—

“The houses of Lima Loa stand,

But there are no people;

They are at Mana.”

The people were by the sea, and two who were fishermen found her. They carried her to their hut, and when they had taken the sea-weed and the sea-moss from her body they saw what a beautiful woman she was. They brought her to their chief, and the chief took Hina-of-the-Sea for his wife.

But after a while he became forgetful of her. After another while he abused her. She had a child now, but she was very lonely, for she was in a far and a strange land.

“The houses of Lima Loa stand,

But there are no people;

They are at Mana.”

She was not forgotten, for Ma-ui Mua, her eldest brother, thought of her. In Kahiki-mo-e they tell of his search for her, and they say that when he [[40]]heard of her casting herself into the sea, he took to his canoe and went searching all over the sea for her. He found new Islands, Islands that no one had ever been on before, and he went from Island to Island, ever hoping to find Hina-of-the-Sea. Far, far he went, and he found neither his sister nor any one who knew about her.

“The houses of Lima Loa stand,

But there are no people;

They are at Mana.”

And every day Hina-of-the-Sea would go down to the shore of the land she was on, and she would call on her eldest brother:

“O Lu-pe! Come over!

Take me and my child!”

Now one day, as Hina cried out on the beach, there came a canoe towards her. There was a man in the canoe; but Hina, hardly noticing him, still cried to the waves and the winds:

“O Lu-pe! Come over!

Take me and my child!”

The man came up on the beach. He was worn with much travel, and he was white and old-looking. He heard the cry that was sent to the waves and the winds, and he cried back an answer: [[41]]

“It is Lu-pe, yes, Lu-pe,

The eldest brother;

And I am here.”

He knew Hina-of-the-Sea. He took her and her child in his canoe, rejoicing that his long search was over at last and that he had a sister again. He took her and her child to one of the Islands which he had discovered.

And there Hina-of-the-Sea lived happily with her eldest brother, Ma-ui Mua, and there her child grew up to manhood. The story of her eldest brother’s search for Hina is not told in Hawaii nei, and one has to go to Kahiki-mo-e to hear it. But in Hawaii nei they tell of a beautiful land that Ma-ui the Skillful came to in search of some one. It is the land, perhaps, that his brother and sister lived in—the beautiful land that is called Moana-liha-i-ka-wao-ke-le.

[[Contents]]

How Ma-ui strove to win Immortality for Men.

Would you hear the seventh and last of great Ma-ui’s deeds? They do not tell of this deed in Hawaii nei, but they tell of it in Kahiki-mo-e. The last was the greatest of all Ma-ui’s deeds, for it was his dangerous labor then to win the greatest boon for men—the boon of everlasting life.

He heard of the Goblin-goddess who is called Hina-nui-ke-po, Great Hina-of-the-Night. It is she [[42]]who brings death on all creatures. But if one could take the heart out of her body and give it to all the creatures of the earth to eat, they would live for ever, and death would be no more in the world.

They tell how the Moon bathes in the Waters of Life, and comes back to the world with her life renewed. And once Ma-ui caught and held the Moon. He said to her, “Let Death be short, and as you return with new strength let it be that men shall come back from Death with new strength.” But the Moon said to Ma-ui, “Rather let Death be long, so that men may sigh and have sorrow. When a man dies, let him go into darkness and become as earth, so that those whom he leaves behind may weep and mourn for him.” But for all that the Moon said to Ma-ui, he would not have it that men should go into the darkness for ever and become as earth. The Moon showed him where Hina-of-the-Night had her abode. He looked over to her Island and saw her. Her eyes shone through the distance; he saw her great teeth that were like volcanic glass and her mouth that was wide like the mouth of a fish; he saw her hair that floated all around her like seaweed in the sea.

He saw her and was afraid; even great Ma-ui was made afraid by the Goblin-goddess, Great Hina-of-the-Night. But he remembered that he had said that he would find a way of giving everlasting life to men and to all creatures, and he thought and [[43]]thought of how he could come to the Goblin-goddess and take the heart out of her body.

It was his task then to draw all creatures to him and to have them promise him that they would help him against the Goblin-goddess. And when at last he was ready to go against her the birds went with him. He came to the Island where she was, Great Hina-of-the-Night. She was sleeping, and all her guards were around her. Ma-ui passed through her guards. He prepared to enter her terrible open mouth, and bring back her heart to give to all the creatures of the earth.

And at last he stood ready to go between the jaws that had the fearful teeth that were sharp like volcanic glass. He stood there in the light of a sun-setting, his body tall and fine and tattooed all over with the histories of his great deeds. He stood there, and then he gave warning to all the birds that none of them was to sing or to laugh until he was outside her jaws again with the heart of the Goblin-goddess in his hands.

He went within the jaws of Great Hina-of-the-Night. He passed the fearful teeth that were sharp like volcanic glass. He went down into her stomach. And then he seized upon her heart. He came back again as far as her jaws, and he saw the sky beyond them.

Then a bird sang or a bird laughed—either the e-le-pa-io sang, or Paka-kai the water-wagtail [[44]]laughed—and the Goblin-goddess wakened up. She caught Ma-ui in her great teeth, and she tore him across. There was darkness then, and the crying of all the birds.

Thus died Ma-ui who raised the sky and who fished up the land, who made the Sun go more slowly across the heavens, and who brought fire to men. Thus died Ma-ui, with the Meat of Immortality in his hands. And since his death no one has ever ventured near the lair of Hina-nui-ke-po, the Goblin-goddess. [[45]]

[[Contents]]

Au-ke-le the Seeker.

In a land that is now lost, in Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country that Supports the Heavens, there lived a King whose name was Iku. He had twelve children, and of these eleven grew up without ever having received any favor or any promise from their father.

But when the twelfth child was born—Au-ke-le was his name—his father took him up in his arms, and he promised him all the honor and power and glory that was his, and he promised him the kingship of Ku-ai-he-lani, the Country that Supports the Heavens.

The other children were angry when they saw their father take little Au-ke-le up in his arms, and they were more angry when they heard the promises that were made to him. And the eldest brother, who was the angriest of all, said, “I am the eldest born, and my father never made such promises to me, and he never took me up in his arms and fondled me.” And this brother, who was now a man grown, went from before his father, and his other brothers went with him.

Au-ke-le grew up. His father gave him many of his possessions—feather cloaks, and whale-tooth necklaces, and many sharp and polished weapons. He grew up to be the handsomest of handsome youths, with a body that was straight and faultless. [[46]]One day, knowing that they had gone to play games in a certain house, he went to follow his brothers. But Iku, his father, said to him, “Do not go where your brothers have gone; they are angry with you, and they have always been angry with you, and it may be that they will do some harm to you in that place.” But in spite of the words of his father Au-ke-le followed his brothers. He came to the house where his brothers were, and he shot his arrow into it. One of his brothers took up the arrow and said, “This is not a stranger’s arrow; this is an arrow from our own house; see, it is twisted.” The eldest brother, who was the angriest of all, took up the arrow and broke it to pieces. He sent the others outside to invite Au-ke-le within the house. And Au-ke-le, believing in the kindness of his brothers, and thinking they were going to let him join in their games, came within.

But they had made a plan against him. They laid hold upon him when he came within the house, and, at the words of the eldest brother, they uncovered a pit and they flung Au-ke-le down into it.

In that pit there lived a mo-o whose name was Ka-mo’o-i-na-nea. This mo-o was really Au-ke-le’s grandmother. She had been a mortal woman; but she had transformed herself into a mo-o, and now she lived in that pit, and she devoured any creature that came into it.

The angry brother called out, “Mo-o, Mo-o, here [[47]]is your food; eat it.” Then he went away. But a younger brother who felt kindly to Au-ke-le whispered down, “Do not eat this youth, Mo-o, for he is your own grandson.” The mo-o heard the words of both. She came before Au-ke-le and she signed for him to follow her. He followed, and they came out on the dry sand that was before the ocean.

Then the mo-o spoke to Au-ke-le her grandson. “There is a land beyond this sea,” she said, “a land that I travelled through in my young days before I took on this dragon-form. Very few people live in that land. You must sail to it; living there you will become great and wise.

“The name of that land is Ka-la-ke’e-nui-a-Kane. The mountains are so high that the stars rest upon them. The people who live there are Na-maka-o-Kahai, the Queen, and her four brothers, who take the forms of birds, and two women-servants. The watchers of her land are a dog called Mo-e-la and a great and fierce bird called Ha-lu-lu.

“I will give you things to take with you. Here is a calabash that has a Magic in it. It has an axe in it also that you can use. And here is food that will last for the longest voyage. It is a leaf, but if you put it to your lips it will take away your hunger and your thirst. I give you my skirt of feathers also; the touch of it will bring death to your enemies.” Then his mo-o grandmother left him, and Au-ke-le was upon the sea-shore with a calabash that had Magic in it, [[48]]with the leaves that stayed his hunger and his thirst, and with the skirt of feathers that would destroy his enemies. And he had in his heart the resolve to go to the land that his mo-o grandmother had told him about.

In the meantime Iku-mai-lani, the kind brother, had gone back to his father’s house. Iku asked what had happened to his favorite son. Then Iku-mai-lani, weeping, told his father that the boy had been flung into the pit where the mo-o was and that he feared the mo-o had devoured him as she had devoured others. Then the father and mother of Au-ke-le wept.