EMERSON] 



UNWRITTEN LITERATURE OF HAWAII 27 



Thus it comes about that the new hula company gains audience at 

 court and walks the road that, perchance, leads to fortune. Success 

 to the men and women of the hula means not merely applause, in 

 return for the incense of flattery ; it means also a shower of substantial 

 favors— food, garments, the smile of royalty, perhaps land— things 

 that make life a festival. If welcome grows cold and it becomes evi- 

 dent that the harvest has been reaped, they move on to fresh woods 

 and pastures new. 



To return from this apparent digression, it was at the king's court— 

 if we may extend the courtesy of this phrase to a group of thatched 

 houses— that were gathered the bards and those skilled in song, those 

 in whose memories were stored the mythologies, traditions, geneal- 

 ogies, proverbial wisdom, and poetry that, warmed by emotion, was 

 the stuff from which was spun the songs of the hula. As fire -is pro- 

 duced by friction, so it was often by the congress of Avits rather than 

 by the flashing of genius that the songs of the hula were evolved. 



The composition and criticism of a poetical passage were a matter 

 of high importance, often requiring many suggestions and much 

 consultation. If the poem was to be a mele-inoa, a name-song to 

 eulogize some royal or princely scion, it must contain no word of 

 ill-omen. The fate-compelling power of such a word, once shot from 

 the mouth, was beyond recall. Like the incantation of the sorcerer, 

 the kahuna dnaand, it meant death to the eulogized one. If not, it 

 recoiled on the life of the singer. 



The verbal form once settled, it remained only to stereotype it on 

 the memories of the men and women who constituted the literary 

 court or conclave. Think not that only thus were poems produced 

 in ancient Hawaii. The great majority of songs were probably the 

 fruit of solitary inspiration, in which the bard poured out his heart 

 like a song-bird, or uttered his lone vision as a seer. The method of 

 poem production in conclave may be termed the official method. It 

 was often done at the command of an alii. So much for the fabri- 

 cation, the weaving, of a song. 



If the composition was intended as a eulogy, it was cantillated cere- 

 moniously before the one it honored; if in anticipation of a prince 

 yet unborn, it was daily recited before the mother until the hour of her 

 delivery ; and this cantillation published it abroad. If the song was 

 for production in the hula, it lay warm in the mind of the kumu, 

 the master and teacher of the hula, until such time as he had organ- 

 ized his company. 



The court of the alii was a vortex that drew in not only the bards 

 and men of lore, but the gay and fashionable rout of pleasure-seekers, 

 the young men and women of shapely form and gracious presence, 

 the sons and daughters of the king's henchmen and favorites ; among 



