iCMi:i!S(ix] UNWRITTEN LITERATUEE OF HAWAII 231 



Hers were the roosts for the gamecocks. 



The wilds of Ka-liu-wa'a my home, 

 30 That too my craft back to Kahiki ; 



This my farewell to Hawaii, 



Land of the God's immigration. 



Strangers we came to Hawaii ; 



A stranger thou, a stranger I, 

 35 Called Broad-edged- Ax : 



I've read the cloud-omens in heaven. 



It curls, it curls! his tail — it curls! 



Look, it clings to his buttocks ! 



Faugh, faugh, faugh, faugh, uff ! 

 40 What ! Ka-haku-ma'a-lani your name ! 



Answer from heaven, oh Kane ! 



^ly song it Is done ! 



If one can trust the statement of the Hawaiian who communicated 

 the above inele, it represents only a portion of the Avhole composition, 

 the first canto — if we nvdj so term it — having dropped into the limbo 

 of forgetf ulness. The author's study of the mele lends no countenance 

 to such a view. Like all Hawaiian poetry, this mele wastes no time 

 with introductory flourishes; it plunges at once in meclias res. 



Hawaiian mythology figured Pele, the goddess of the volcano, as a 

 creature of passion, capable of many metamorphoses; now a 

 wrinkled hag, asleep in a cave on a rough lava bed, with banked fires 

 and only an occasional blue flame playing about her as symbols of her 

 power; now a creature of terror, riding on a chariot of flame and 

 carrying destruction; and now as a young woman of seductive 

 beauty, as when she sought passionate relations with the handsome 

 prince, Lohiau; but in disposition always jealous, fickle, vengeful. 



Kama-pua'a was a demigod of anomalous birth, character, and 

 make-up, sharing the nature and form of a man and of a hog, and 

 assuming either form as suited the occasion. He was said to be the 

 nephew of Olopana, a king of Oahu, whose kindness in acting as his 

 foster father he repaid by the robbery of his henroosts and other im- 

 filial conduct. He lived the lawless life of a marauder and freebooter, 

 not confining his operations to one island, but swimming from one to 

 another as the fit took him. On one occasion, when the farmers of 

 Waipi'o, whom he had robbed, assembled with arms to bar his retreat 

 and to deal vengeance upon him, he charged upon the multitude, 

 overthrew them with great slaughter, and escaped with his plunder. 



Toward Pele Kama-pua'a assumed the attitude of a lover, whose 

 approaches she at one time permitted to her peril. The incident 

 took place in one of the ^ater caves — volcanic bubbles — in Puna, 

 and at the level of the ocean ; but when he had the audacity to invade 

 her privacy and call to her as slie reposed in her home at Kilauea she 

 repelled his advances and answered his persistence with a fiery onset, 

 from which he fled in terror and discomfiture, not haltino- until he 



