62 
PRESTON. 
to religion and poetry. Any one who has heard the Kahuna 
chant his incantations can never forget the doleful, plaintive 
tone which invariably accompanies such service. 
The Hawaiians are passionately fond of poetry. They 
have no rhyme or meter in the modern sense, and no con¬ 
ception of the change of the length of feet, nor the shifting 
of the accent, which lends such a charm to English versifica¬ 
tion ; but they have a style, highly figurative, appropriate 
to different classes of poetry. 
There are, first, religious chants. Then the Inoas or name 
songs; these were composed at the birth of kings. Then came 
the dirges, and finally the Ipos or love songs. Here is an 
example of a dirge composed at the death of Keeaumoku 
and cited by Alexander in his history of the Hawaiian peo¬ 
ple. The translation is by Ellis: 
Alas, alas, dead is my chief; 
Dead is my lord and my friend ; 
My friend in the season of famine; 
My friend in the time of drought; 
My friend in my poverty; 
My friend in the rain and the wind; 
My friend in the heat and the sun; 
My friend in the cold from the mountain ; 
My friend in the storm; 
My friend in the calm; 
My friend in the eight seas; 
Alas, alas, gone is my friend; 
And no more will return. 
Imagery. — Notwithstanding the exceedingly primitive 
nature of the Hawaiian language, it has been successfully 
employed to express the abstractions of mathematics, and is 
found flexible enough to deal with law and theology. Of 
the three classes of words found in all languages, namely, 
those expressing sensations, images, and abstract ideas, the 
Polynesian dialects are most copious in the second. The 
several dozen words already cited, indicating different posi- 
