BECKWITH] INTRODUCTION 3825 
The sun is up, it is up; 
My love is ever up before me. 
It is causing me great sorrow, it is pricking me in the side, 
For love is a burden when one is in love, 
And falling tears are its due. 
__ How vividly the mind enters into this analogy is proved by its 
swift identification with the likeness presented. Originally this 
identification was no doubt due to ideas of magic. In romance, 
life in the open—in the forests or on the sea—has taken posses- 
sion of the imagination. In the myths heroes climb the heavens, 
dwelling half in the air; again they are amphibian like their 
great lizard ancestors. In the Laietkawai, as in so many stories, 
note how much of the action takes place on or in the sea—canoe- 
ing, swimming, or surfing. In less humanized tales the realiza- 
tion is much more fantastic. To the Polynesian mind such. figurative 
sayings as “swift as a bird” and “swim like a fish” mean a literal 
transformation, his sense of identity being yet plastic, capable of 
uniting itself with whatever shape catches the eye. When the poet 
Marvel says— 
Casting the body’s vest aside, 
My soul into the boughs does glide; 
There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 
Then whets and combs its silver wings, 
And, till prepared for longer flight, 
Waves in its plumes the various light— 
he is merely expressing a commonplace of primitive mental expe- 
rience, transformation stories being of the essence of Polynesian as 
of much primitive speculation about the natural objects to which 
his eye is drawn with wonder and delight. 
4. THE DOUBLE MEANING; PLAYS ON WORDS 
Analogy is the basis of many a double meaning. There is, in fact, 
no lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it 
some implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an 
adroit and practiced mind to unravel. 
This riddling tendency of figurative verse seems to be due to the 
aristocratic patronage of composition, whose tendency was to exalt 
language above the comprehension of the common people, either by 
obscurity, through ellipsis and allusion, or by saying one thing and 
Meaning another. A special chief’s language was thus evolved, in 
which the speaker might couch his secret resolves and commands 
unsuspected by those who stood within earshot. Quick interpretation 
of such symbols was the test of chiefly rank and training. On the 
other hand, the wish to appear innocent led him to hide his mean- 
ing in a commonplace observation. Hence nature and the objects 
