BECKWITH] INTRODUCTION obs 
In the play upon the words Manini and Hanini we recognize some 
rhetorical tinkering, but in general the purpose here is to enumerate 
the actual places famous in Kualii’s history. 
At other times a place-name is used with allusive interest, the sug- 
gested incident being meant, like certain stories alluded to in the 
Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf,” to set off, by comparison or contrast, the 
present situation. It is important for the poet to know, for example, 
that the phrase “flowers of Paiahaa” refers to the. place on Kau, 
Hawaii, where love-tokens cast into the sea at a point some 20 or 30 
miles distant on the Puna coast, invariably find their way to shore 
in the current and bring their message to watchful lovers. 
A third use of localization conforms exactly to our own sense of 
description. The Island of Kauai is sometimes visible lying off to 
the northwest of Oahu. At this side of the island rises the Waianae 
range topped by the peak Kaala. In old times the port of entry for 
travelers to Oahu from Kauai was the seacoast village of Waianae. 
Between it and the village of Waialua runs a great spur of the 
range, which breaks off abruptly at the sea, into the point Kaena. 
Kahuku point lies beyond Waialua at the northern extremity of the 
island. Mokuleia, with its old inland fishpond, is the first village 
to the west of Waialua. This is the setting for the following lines, 
again taken from the chant of Avalii, the translation varying only 
slightly from that edited by Thrum: 
O Kauai, 
Great Kauai, inherited from ancestors, 
Sitting in the calm of Waianae, 
A cape is Kaena, 
Beyond, Kahuku, 
A misty mountain back, where the winds meet, Kaala, 
There below sits Waialua, 
Waialua there, 
Kahala is a dish for Makuleia, 
A fishpond for the shark roasted in ti-leaf, 
The tail of the shark is Kaena, 
The shark that goes along below Kauai, 
Below Kauai, thy land, 
Kauai O! 
The number of such place names to be stored in the reciter’s 
memory is considerable. Not only are they applied in lavish pro- 
fusion to beach, rock, headland, brook, spring, cave, waterfall, even 
to an isolated tree of historic interest, and distributed to less clearly 
marked small land areas to name individual holdings, but, because 
of the importance of the weather in the fishing and seagoing life of 
the islander, they are affixed to the winds, the rains, and the surf or 
“sea” of each locality. All these descriptive appellations the 
composer must employ to enrich his means of place allusion. Even 
