324 HAWAIIAN ROMANCE OF LAIEIKAWAI [ETH. ANN. 33 
The coconut leaves are “the hair of the trees, their long locks.” 
Kailua district is “a mat spread out narrow and gray.” 
The classic example of the use of such metaphor in Hawaiian song 
is the famous passage in the Zauikalani in which chiefs at war are 
compared with a cockfight, the favorite Hawaiian pastime?! being 
realistically described in allusion to Keoua’s wars on Hawaii: 
Hawaii is a cockpit; the trained cocks fight on the ground. 
The chief fights—the dark-red cock awakes at night for battle; 
The youth fights valiantly—Loeau, son of Keoua. 
He whets his spurs, he pecks as if eating; 
He scratches in the arena—this Hilo—the sand of Waiolama. 
* * * * * * * 
He is a well-fed cock. The chief is complete, 
Warmed in the smokehouse till the dried feathers rattle, 
With changing colors, like many-colored paddles, like piles of polished Kahili. 
The feathers rise and fall at the striking of the spurs. 
Here the allusions to the red color and to eating suggest a chief. 
The feather brushes waved over a chief and the bright-red paddles of 
his war fleet are compared to the motion of a fighting cock’s bright 
feathers, the analogy resting upon the fact that the color and the 
motion of rising and falling are common to all three. 
This last passage indicates the precise charm of Polynesian meta- 
phor. It les in the singer’s close observation of the exact and char- 
acteristic truth which suggests the likeness, an exactness necessary to 
carry the allusion with his audience, and which he sharpens inces- 
santly from the concrete facts before him. Kuapakaa sings: 
The rain in the winter comes slanting, 
Taking the breath away, pressing down the hair, 
Parting the hair in the middle. 
The chants are full of such precise descriptions, and they furnish 
the rich vocabulary of epithet employed in recalling a place, person, 
or object. Transferred to matters of feeling or emotion, they result 
in poetical comparisons of much charm. Sings Kuapakaa (Wise’s 
translation) : : 
The pointed clouds have become fixed in the heavens, 
The pointed clouds grow quiet like one in pain before childbirth, 
Ere it comes raining heavily, without ceasing. 
The umbilicus of the rain is in the heavens, 
The streams will yet be swollen by the rain. 
Hina’s song of longing for her lost lover in Laieikawai should be 
compared with the lament of Laukiamanuikahiki when, abandoned 
by her lover, she sees the clouds drifting in the direction he has 
taken: 
1 Mocrenhout, 11, 146. 
