EMERSON] UNWRITTEN L1TP:RATUKE OF HAWAII 185 



Appeased not with lior whole l»o<ly. 

 My body is pledged to another. 

 30 Crown it, Ku, crown it. 

 Now the sei'vice is free! 



Some parts of this mele, which is a love-song, have defied the 

 author's most strenuous efforts to penetrate their deeper meaning. 

 No Hawaiian consulted has made a pretense of understanding it 

 wholly. The Philistines of the middle of the nineteenth century, into 

 whose hands it fell, have not helped matters by the emendations and 

 interpolations with which they slyly interlarded the text, as if to set 

 before us in a strong light the stigmata of degeneracy from which 

 ihe}^ were suffering. 



The author has discarded from the text two verses which followed 

 verse 28 : 



Hal'na la niai ka puana : 

 Ka wai anai)a i Ue knla. 



I Trnnslation 1 



Declare to me now the riddle : 

 The waters that flash on the plain. 



The author has refrained from casting out the last two verses, 

 though in his judgment they are entirely out of place and were not 

 in the mele originally. 



