8 INTRODUCTION 



with the riotous and passionate ebullitions of Polynesian kings and 

 the amorous posturing of their voluptuaries. We must make a just 

 distinction, however, between the gestures and bodily contortions pre- 

 sented by the men and women, the actors in the hula, and their 

 uttered words. " The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the 

 hands of Esau." In truth, the actors in the hula no longer suit 

 the action to the word. The utterance harks back to the golden age ; 

 the gesture is trumped up by the passion of the hour, or dictated 

 by the master of the hula, to whom the real meaning of the old bards 

 is ofttimes a sealed casket. 



Whatever indelicacy attaches in modern times to some of the ges- 

 tures and contortions of the hula dancers, the old-time hula songs 

 ^n large measure were untainted with grossness. If there ever were 

 a Polynesian Arcadia, and if it were possible for true reports of the 

 doings and sayings of the Polynesians to reach us from that happy 

 land — reports of their joys and sorrows, their love-makings and their 

 jealousies, their family spats and reconciliations, their -worship of 

 beauty and of the gods and goddesses who walked in the garden of 

 beauty — we may say, I think, that such a report would be in substan- 

 tial agreement with the report that is here offered ; but, if one's vir- 

 tue will not endure the love-making of Arcadia, let him banish the 

 myth from his imagination and hie to a convent or a nunnery. 



If this book does nothing more than prove that savages are only 

 children of a younger growth than ourselves, that what Ave find them 

 to have been we ourselves — in our ancestors — once were, the labor of 

 making it will have been not in vain. 



For an account of the first hula we may look to the story of Pele. 

 On one occasion that goddess begged her sisters to dance and sing 

 before her, but they all excused themselves, saying they did not know 

 the art. At that moment in came little Hiiaka, the youngest and the 

 favorite. Unknown to her sisters, the little maiden had practised the 

 dance under the tuition of her friend, the beautiful but ill-fated 

 Hopoe. "N^Hien banteringly invited to dance, to the surj^rise of all, 

 Hiiaka modestly complied. The w^ave-beaten sand-beach was her 

 floor, the open air her hall. Feet and hands and swaying form kept 

 time to her improvisation : 



Look, Puna is a-dauce in the wind ; 



The palm groves of Kea-au shaken. 



Haena and the woman Hopoe dance and sing 



On the beach Nana-huki, 



A dance of purest delight, 



Down by the sea Nana-huki. 



The nature of this work has made it necessary to use occasional 

 Hawaiian words in the technical parts. At their first introduction 



