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A second significant trait in the treatment of objective life, swiftness of analogy, affects the Polynesian in two ways: the first is pictorial and plays upon a likeness between objects or describes an idea or mood in metaphorical terms; the second is a mere linguistic play upon words. Much nomenclature is merely a quick picturing which fastens attention upon the special feature that attracts attention; ideas are naturally reinforced by some simple analogy. I recall a curious imported flower with twisted inner tube which the natives call, with a characteristic touch of daring drollery, "the intestines of the clergyman." Spanish moss is named from a prominent figure of the foreign community "Judge Dole's beard." Some native girls, braiding fern wreaths, called my attention to the dark, graceful fronds which grow in the shade and are prized for such work. "These are the natives," they said; then pointing slyly to the coarse, light ferns burned in the sun they added, "these are the foreigners." After the closing exercises of a mission school in Hawaii one of the parents was called upon to make an address. He said: "As I listen to the songs and recitations I am like one who walks through the forest where the birds are singing. I do not understand the words, but the sound is sweet to the ear." The boys in a certain district school on Hawaii call the weekly head inspection "playing the ukulele" in allusion to the literal interpretation of the name for the native banjo. These homely illustrations, taken from the everyday life of the people, illustrate a habit of mind which, when applied for conscious emotional effect, results in much charm of formal expression. The habit of isolating the essential feature leads to such suggestive names as "Leaping water," "White mountain," "The gathering place of the clouds," for waterfall or peak; or to such personal appellations as that applied to a visiting foreigner who had temporarily lost his voice, "The one who never speaks"; or to such a description of a large settlement as "many footprints."[1] The graphic sense of analogy applies to a mountain such a name as "House of the sun"; to the prevailing rain of a certain district the appellation "The rain with a pack on its back," "Leaping whale" or "Ghostlike"; to a valley, "The leaky canoe"; to a canoe, "Eel sleeping in the water." A man who has no brother in a family is called "A single coconut," in allusion to a tree from which hangs a single fruit.[2]

This tendency is readily illustrated in the use of synonyms. Oili means "to twist, roll up;" it also means "to be weary, agitated, tossed about in mind." Hoolala means "to branch out," as the branches of a tree; it is also applied in sailing to the deflection from a course. Kilohana is the name given to the outside decorated piece of tapa in a skirt of five layers; it means generally, therefore, "the very best" in contrast to that which is inferior. Kuapaa means literally "to harden the back" with oppressive work; it is applied to a breadfruit parched on the tree or to a rock that shows itself above water. Lilolilo means "to spread out, expand as blossom from bud;" it also applies to an open-handed person. Nee may mean "to hitch along from one place to another," or "to change the mind." Palele means "separate, put somewhere else when there is no place vacant;" it also applies to stammering. These illustrations gathered almost at random may be indefinitely multiplied. I recall a clergyman in a small hamlet on Hawaii who wished to describe the character of the people of that place. Picking up a stone of very close grain of the kind used for pounding and called alapaa, literally, "close-grained stone," he explained that because the people of that section were "tight" (stingy) they were called Kaweleau alapaa. This ready imitativeness, often converted into caricature, enters into the minutest detail of life and is the clew to many a familiar proverb like that of the canoe on the coral reef quoted in the text.[3] The chants abound in such symbols. Man is "a long-legged fish" offered to the gods. Ignorance is the "night of the mind." The cloud hanging over Kaula is a bird which flies before the wind[4]—

The blackbird begged,

The bird of Kaula begged,

Floating up there above Waahila.

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 Hauikalani in which chiefs at war are compared with a cockfight, the favorite Hawaiian pastime[5] 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 metaphor. It lies in the singer's close observation of the exact and characteristic truth which suggests the likeness, an exactness necessary to carry the allusion with his audience, and which he sharpens incessantly 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.

[Illustration: A HAWAIIAN PADDLER (HENSHAW)]

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:

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 possession 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 Laieikawai, as in so many stories, note how much of the action takes place on or in the sea—canoeing, swimming, or surfing. In less humanized tales the realization 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 experience, 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.

Footnotes to Section III, 3: Analogy

[Footnote 1: Turner, Samoa, p. 220.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid.; Moerenhout, I, 407–410.]

[Footnote 3: Turner, Samoa, pp. 216–221; Williams and Calvert, I, p. 110.]

[Footnote 4: Williams and Calvert, I, 118.]

[Footnote 5: Moerenhout, II, 146.]