Читать книгу Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula - Nathaniel Bright Emerson - Страница 34

Wreath Song

Ka-ula wears the ocean as a wreath;

Nii-hau shines forth in the calm.

After the calm blows the wind Inu-wai;

Naue's palms then drink in the salt.

5

From Naue the palm, from Puna the woman--

Aye, from the pit, Kilauea.

Tradition tells a pathetic story (p. 212) in narrating an incident touching the occasion on which this song first was sung.

87. Kupukupu. Said to be a fragrant grass.

88. Kane-hoa. Said to be a hill at Kaupo, Maul. Another person says it is a hill at Lihue, on Oahu. The same name is often repeated.

89. Ho-a. To bind. An instance of word-repetition, common in Hawaiian poetry.

90. Wai-kaloa. A cool wind that Wows at Lihue, Kauai

91. Alina. A scar, or other mark of disfigurement, a moral blemish. In ancient times lovers inflicted injuries on themselves to prove devotion.

92. Kikepa. The bias, the one-sided slant given the pa-ú by tucking it in at one side, as previously described.

93. Imu. An oven; an allusion to the heat and passion of the part covered by the pa-ú.

94. Hu'a. Foam; figurative of the fringe at the border of the pa-ú.

95. Kuina. A term applied to the five sheets that were stitched together (kui) to make a set of bed-clothes. Five turns also, it is said, complete a pa-ú.

96. Pali no Kupe-Hau. Throughout the poem the pa-ú is compared to a pali, a mountain wall. Kupe-hau is a precipitous part of Wai-pi'o valley.

97. Hono-kane. A valley near Wai-pi'o. Here it is personified and said to do the work on the pa-ú.

98. Manú. A proper name given to this pa-ú.

99. Kau-kini. The name of a hill back of Lahaina-luna, the traditional residence of a kahuna named Lua-hoo-moe, whose two sons were celebrated for their manly beauty. Ole-pau, the king of the island Maui, ordered his retainer, Lua-hoo-moe, to fetch for his eating some young u-a'u, a sea-bird that nests and rears its young in the mountains. These young birds are esteemed a delicacy. The kahuna, who was a bird-hunter, truthfully told the king that it was not the season for the young birds; the parent birds were haunting the ocean. At this some of the king's boon companions, moved by ill-will, charged the king's mountain retainer with suppressing the truth, and in proof they brought some tough old birds caught at sea and had them served for the king's table. Thereupon the king, not discovering the fraud, ordered that Lua-hoo-moe should be put to death by fire. The following verses were communicated to the author as apropos of Kau-kini, evidently the name of a man:

Ike ia Kau-kini, he lawaia manu.

He upena ku'u i ka noe i Poha-kahi,

Ua hoopulu ia i ka ohu ka kikepa;

Ke na'i la i ka luna a Kea-auwana;

Ka uahi i ke ka-peku e hei ai ka manu o Pu-o-alii.

O ke alii wale no ka'u i makemake

Ali'a la, ha'o, e!