EMERSON] UNWRITTEN LITERATURE OF HAWAII 129 



Pule Hook It'll 



Ku ka makaia a ka huaka'i moe ipo ; " 

 Ku au, hele; 

 Nolio oe, aloha ! 



Aloha ua hale o makon i ruakamaka-ole, 

 5 Ke alauiii hele manka o Hiili-wale,'' la ; 

 H-u-I-i. 



E hull a'e ana i ka makaua, 

 I ke alana ole e kanaenae akii la oe. 

 Eia ke kanaenae, o ka leo. 



[Translation] 



Dismissing Prayer 



Doomed sacrifice I in the love-quest, 

 I stand [loin-girt] " for the journey; 

 To you who remain, farewell ! 

 Farewell to our homes forsaken. 

 5 On the road beyond lu-decision, 

 I turn me about — - 

 Turn me about, for lack of a gift, 

 Au offering, intercession, for thee — 

 My sole intercession, the voice. 



This fragment — two fragments, in fact, pieced together — belongs 

 to the epic of Pele. As her little sister, Hiiaka, is about to start on 

 her adventurous journey to bring the handsome Prince Lohiau from 

 the distant island of Kauai she is overcome by a premonition of Pele's 

 jealousy and vengeance, and she utters this intercession. 



The formalities just described speak for themselves. They mark 

 better than any comments can do the superstitious devotion of the 

 old-timers to formalism, their remoteness from that free touch of 

 social and artistic pleasure, the lack of which we moderns often la- 

 ment in our own lives and sigh for as a lost art, conceiving it to have 

 been once the possession of " the children of nature.'' 



The author has already hinted at the form and character of the 

 entertainments with which hula-folk sometimes beguiled their pro- 

 fessional interludes. Fortunately the author is able to illustrate by 

 means of a song the very form of entertainment they provided for 

 themselves on such an occasion. The following mele, cantillated with 

 an accompaniment of expressive gesture, is one that was actually 

 given at an awa-drinking bout indulged in by hula-folk. The author 

 has an account of its recital at Kahuku, island of Oahu, so late as 

 the year 1849, during a circuit of that island made by King Kame- 



" A literal translation of the first line would be as follows: (Here) stands the doomed 

 sacrifice for the journey in search of a bed-lover. 



'> Huli-wale. To turn about, here used as the name of a place, is evidently intended 

 figuratively to stand for mental indecision. 



"^ The braclieted phrase is not in the text of the original. 



25352— Bull. 38—09 9 



