296 HAWAIIAN ROMANCE OF LAIEIKAWAI [ETH. ANN. 33 
several hours in the telling or run for a couple of years as serial in 
some Hawaiian newspaper are of necessity cut down to a summary 
narrative, sufliciently suggesting the flavor of the original, but not 
picturing fully the way in which the image is formed in the mind 
of the native story-teller. Foreigners and Hawaiians have expended 
much ingenuity in rendering the mélé or chant with exactness,’ but 
the much simpler if less important matter of putting into literal 
English a Hawaiian kaao has never been attempted. 
To the text such ethnological notes have been added as are needed 
to make the context clear. These were collected in the field. Some 
were gathered directly from the people themselves; others from 
those who had lived long enough among them to understand 
their customs; others still from observation of their ways and of the 
localities mentioned in the story; others are derived from published 
texts. An index of characters, a brief description of the local back- 
ground, and an abstract of the story itself prefaces the text; appended 
to it is a series of abstracts from the Fornander collection, of 
Hawaiian folk stories, all of which were collected by Judge For- 
nander in the native tongue and later rendered into English by a 
native translator. These abstracts illustrate the general character of 
Hawaiian story-telling, but specific references should be examined in 
the full text, now being edited by the Bishop Museum. The index 
to references includes all the Hawaiian material in available form 
essential to the study of romance, together with the more useful 
Polynesian material for comparative reference. It by no means com- 
prises a bibliography of the entire subject. 
IJ. Narure AND THE Gops AS REFLECTED IN THE STORY 
1. POLYNESIAN ORIGIN OF HAWATIAN ROMANCE 
Truly to interpret Hawaiian romance we must realize at the start 
its relation to the past of that people, to their origin and migrations, 
their social inheritance, and the kind of physical world to which 
their experience has been confined. Now, the real body of Hawaiian 
folklore belongs to no isolated group, but to the whole Polynesian 
area. From New Zealand through the Tongan, Ellice, Samoan, 
Society, Rarotongan, Marquesan, and Hawaiian groups, fringing 
upon the Fijian and the Micronesian, the same physical character- 
1The most important of these chants translated from the Hawaiian are the “ Song 
of Creation,” prepared by Liliuokalani; the ‘ Song of Kualii,’’ translated by both Lyons 
and Wise, and the prophetic song beginning “ Haui ka lani,’ translated by Andrews and 
edited by Dole. To these should be added the important songs cited by Fornander, in 
full or in part, which relate the origin of the group, and perhaps the name song begin- 
ning “ The fish ponds of Mana,” quoted in Fornander’s tale of Lonoikamakahiki, the 
canoe-chant in Kana, and the wind chants in Pakaa, 
