330 HAWAIIAN ROMANCE OF LAIEIKAWAI [PTH. ANN. 33 
devices contribute values to the ear which help to catch and please 
the sense. 
IV. Concrusions 
1. Much of the material of Hawaiian song and story is traditional within other 
Polynesian groups. 
2. Verse making is practiced as an aristocratic art of high social value in the 
households of chiefs, one in which both men and women take part. 
In both prose and poetry, for the purpose of social aggrandizement, the 
theme is the individual hero exalted through his family connection and 
his own achievement to the rank of divinity. 
The action of the story generally consists in a succession of contests in 
which is tested the hero’s claim to supernatural power. These contests 
range from mythical encounters in the heavens to the semihistorical rival- 
ries of chiefs. : 
The narrative may take on a high degree of complexity, involving many 
well-differentiated characters and a well-developed art of conversation, 
and in some instances, especially in revenge, trickster, or recognition 
motives, approaching plot tales in our sense of the word. 
The setting of song or story, both physical and social, is distinctly realized. 
Stories persist and are repeated in the localities where they are localized. 
Highly characterisiic are stories of rock transformations and of other 
local configurations, still pointed to as authority for the tale. 
7. Different types of hero appear : 
(a) The hero may be a human being of high rank and of unusual power 
either of strength, skill, wit, or craft. 
(b) He may be a demigod of supernatural power, half human, half 
divine. q 
(c) He may be born in shape of a beast, bird, fish, or other object, with 
or without the power to take human form or monstrous size. 
(d@) He may bear some relation to the sun, moon, or stars, a form rare 
in Hawaii, but which, when it does occur, is treated objectively 
rather than allegorically. 
(e) He may be a god, without human kinship, either one of the “ depart- 
mental gods”’ who rule over the forces of nature, or of the hostile 
spirits who inhabited the islands before they were occupied by the 
present race. 
(f) He may be a mere ordinary man who by means of one of tiiese 
supernatural helpers achieves success. 
8. Poetry and prose show a quite different process of developmeut. In prose, 
connected narrative has found free expression. In poetry, the epic process 
is neglected. Besides the formal dirge and highly developed lyric songs 
(often accompanied and interpreted by dance), the characteristic form is 
the eulogistic hymn, designed to honor an individual by rehearsing his 
family’s achievements, but in broken and ejaculatory panegyric rather than 
in connected narrative. In prose, again, the picture presented is highly 
we 
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5. The expression of surprise, he mea kupanaha, is literally ‘‘a strange thing,” like 
our impersonal “it is strange”? (p. 351). 
6. The vocable e is used to express strong emotion. (P. 551.) 
7. Add to these an occasional use, for emphasis, of the belittling question, whose 
answer, although generally left to be understood, may be given; for example 
(p. 449): A heaha la o Haua-i-liki ia Laiei-ka-wai? he opala paha, ‘*‘ What was 
Hauailiki to Laieikawai? ‘mere chaff!’’’, and the expression of contempt—ka— 
with which the princess dismisses her wooer (p. 413). 
