EMERSON] UNWRITTEN LITERATURE OF HAWAII 51 



While the girls are making their simple toilet and donning their 

 unique, but scanty, costume, the kumu, aided by others, soothes the 

 impatience of the audience and stimulates their imagination by can- 

 tillating a mele that sets forth in grandiloquent imagery the praise 

 of the pa-ii. 



07 1 Pa-u 



Kakua pa-u, ahu ua kikepa ! " 

 I ka pa-u noenoe i hooluu'a, 

 I liookakua ia a paa iluna o ka imu.^ 

 Ku ka liu'a ^ o ka pali o ka wai kapu, 

 5 He kuiua <* pa-ti pali '^ no Kupe-hau, 

 I holo a paa ia, paa e Hono-kaue/ 



Malania o lilo i Iva pa-ti. 

 Holo iho la ke ala ka Manu ^ i na pali; 

 Pali ku kahako haka a-i, 

 10 I ke keiki pa-u pali a Kau-kini,'' 

 I lioonu'anu'a iluna o ka Auwaua.^ 



" Kikepa. The bias, the one-sided slant given the pa-fi by tucking it in at one side, as 

 previously described. 



*"/)»«. An oven; an allusion to the heat and passion of the part covered by the pa-u. 

 «■ Hu'o. Foam ; figurative of the fringe at the border of the pa-u. 



* Kulna. A term applied to the five sheets that were stitched together {kui) to make 

 a set of bed-clothes. Five turns also, it is said, complete a pa-fl. 



"Pali no Kupe-hau. Throughout the poem the pan is compared to a pall, a mountain 

 wall. Kupe-hau is a precipitous part of Wai-pi"o valley. 



' Hono-kane. A valley near Wai-pi'o. Here it is personified and said to do the work 

 on the pa-u. 



» Mani'i. A proper name given to this pa-u. 



* Knu-kini. The name of a hill back of Lahaina-luna, the traditional residence of a 

 kahuna named Lua-hoo-moe, whose two sons were celebrated for their manl.v beauty. 

 Ole-pau, the king of the island Maui, ordered his retainer, Lua-hoo-moe, to fetch for his 

 eating some young u-a'u, a sea-bird that nests and rears its young in the mountains. 

 These young birds are esteemed a delicacy. The kahuna, who was a bird-hunter, truth- 

 fully told the king that it was not the season for the young birds ; the parent birds were 

 haunting the ocean. At this some of the king's boon companions, moved by ill-will, 

 charged the king's mountain retainer with suppressing the truth, and in proof they 

 brought some tough old birds caught at sea and had them served for the king's table. 

 Thereupon the king, not discovering the fraud, ordered that Lua-hoo-moe should be put 

 to death by fire. The following verses were communicated to the author as apropos of 

 Kau-kini, evidently the name of a man : 



Ike ia Kau-kini, he lawaia manu. 



He upena ku'u i ka noe i Poha-kahi, 



Ua hoopulu ia i ka ohu ka kikepa ; 



Ke na'i la i ka luna a Kea-auwana ; 



Ka uahi i ke ka-peku e hei ai ka manu o I'u-o-alii. 



O ke alii wale no ka'u i makemake 



Ali'a la, ha'o, e ! 



[Translation] 

 Behold Kau-kini, a fisher of birds ; 

 Net spread in the mist of Poha-kahi, 

 That is soaked by the sidling fog. 

 ( It strives on the crest of Koa-auwana. 



Smoke traps the birds of Pu-o-alii. * 



It's only the king that I wish : 

 But stay now — I doubt. 



* Auwana. Said to be an eminence on the flank of Haleakala, back of Ulupalakua. 



