432 Foniandcr Collection of Hawaiian Folk-lore. 



CHAPTER IX. 



SUPPLEMENTARY. 



Tlic Royal Kolon>alii Statute.' — Thi.s was the best law during the reigu of Kualii 

 Kuniakea Kuikealaikauaokalani." It was strict, unvarying and always just. It was 

 for the care and preservation of life; it was for the aged men and women to lie down in 

 the road with safety; it was to help the husbandmen and the fishermen; to entertain 

 (morally) strangers, and feed the hungry with food. If a man says, "I am hungry for 

 food," feed [him] with food, lest he hungers and claims his rights by swearing the 

 kolowalu law by his mouth, whereby that food becomes free, so that the owner thereof 

 cannot withhold it; it is forfeited b}' law. It is better to compensate. He who swears 

 must observe the law faithfully, lest he be accountable to the law of the king which he 

 has sworn to observe,^ and the punishment be upon him. If it is simple robbery of 

 others' food, or of others' property, then severe punishment shall be meted out to the 

 person who violated the law. A transgressor,^ or one who is about to die, is, under the 

 application of this law exonerated of his death or other penalty. Through the upright- 

 ness of his [Kualii's] law, and the honest}- with which he administered the government, 

 God preserved him, so that he lived a long life, and his is that notable life spoken of in 

 the annals of the ancient people, of the king of Oahu, who lived four times forty and 

 fifteen 3'ears. In the last stage of life he was bent with age and withered, with the 

 eyes reddened and bedimmed; and was carried about in a netting. He died at Kailua, 

 in Koolaupoko, in A.D. 1730, in the one hundred and seventy-fifth year of his life. 



Kualii is thus shown to have lived to an extremely old age, and to have pos- 

 sessed unusual strength and vigor throughout. Fornander, in his Polj'uesian Race, 

 Vol. II, pages 283-4, furnishes the following additional legendary data and character- 

 istic final of this eminent worth}' : 



"It is related that when Kualii was upwards of ninety years old, Peleioholani 

 arrived one time from Kauai on a visit to his father on Oahu. Without endorsing the 

 details of the legend, it suffices to say that a quarrel arose between father and son; that 

 the latter assaulted the former, and a scuffle ensued in which the old man, getting the 

 grip of the lua^ on his son, handled him so severel}^ that, when released from the 

 paternal grasp, he started at once for Kauai, and never revisited Oahu uutil after his 

 father's death. 



"Kailua, in Koolaupoko, seems to have been the favorite residence of Kualii, and 

 there he died at a very advanced age. Shortly before his death he called his trustiest 

 kahu and friend to his side and strictl}' enjoined upon him the dut}' of hiding his bones 



•A beneficent law which, on occasions, appears to 'Under the old order mercy was unknown; death 



supercede the established ordinance. penalty for transgressions usually prevailed. 



'The historian Kamakau here furnishes Kualii's full -'The liia was like the strangle-hold in wrestling, giv- 



name for the first time, though this latter appellation ing one the complete mastery over the other. It is said 



is used in the supplementary mele. that one getting this grip on his opponent could break 



3A safeguarding against seeking to obtain benefits his bones in mid-air as he threw him. 

 under this law by false representation. 



