what hiiaka saw from the height of poha-kea
to return now to hiiaka, who, after a hot climb, is standing on the summit of poha-kea; she is gazing with rapt and clear vision far away in the direction of her own home-land, her moku lehua, in puna. her eyes, under the inspiration of the moment, disregard the ocean foreground, on whose gently heaving bosom might be seen the canoe that holds lohiau and wahine-oma’o snailing along to its appointed rendezvous. her mind is busy interpreting the unusual signs written in the heavens: a swelling mountainous mass of flame-shot clouds, boiling up from some hidden source. it spells ruin and desolation—her own forest-parks blasted and fire-smitten; but, saddest and most heart-rending of all is the thought that her own hopoe, the beautiful, the accomplished, the generous, the darling of her heart—hopoe [163]has been swallowed up in the rack. hopoe, whose accepted emblem and favorite poetical metamorphosis was a tall lehua tree in full blossom, is now a scarred rock teetotumed back and forth by the tides and waves of the ocean. this thought, however much she would put it aside, remained to fester in her heart.
(we omit at this point a considerable number of mele which are ascribed to hiiaka and declared to have been sung by her while occupying this mountain perch at poha-kea. application to them of the rule that requires conformity to a reasonable standard of relevancy to the main purpose of the narrative results in their exclusion.)
the song next given—by some dubbed a pule, because of its serious purpose, no doubt—seems to be entitled to admission to the narrative:
aluna au a poha-kea,
ku au, nana ia puna:
po puna i ka ua awaawa;
pohina puna i ka ua noenoe;
hele ke a i kai o ka la-hiku o a’u lehua,
o a’u lehua i aina1 ka manu;
i lahui2 ai a kapu.
aia la, ke huki’a3 la i kai o nana-huki—
hula le’a wale i kai o nana-huki, e!
translation
on the heights of poha-kea
i stand and look forth on puna:
puna, pelted with bitter rain,
veiled with a downpour black as night!
gone, gone are my forests, lehuas
whose bloom once gave the birds nectar!
yet they were insured with a promise!
look, how the fire-fiends flit to and fro!
a merry dance for them to the sea,
down to the sea at nana-huki!
hiiaka now pays attention to the doings of the people on the canoe in the offing. it is necessary to explain that, on landing [164]at mokuleia, she had ordered her two companions to continue their voyage and meet her on the other side of cape kaena whose pointed beak lay close at hand. lohiau, nothing loath—a pretty woman was company enough for him—turned the prow of the canoe seaward and resumed his paddle. after passing the cape, the ocean calmed, making the work of steering much less arduous. now it was that lohiau, feeling the warm blood of young manhood swell the cockles of his heart and finding opportunity at hand, made ardent love to his attractive voyage-companion. he pressed nose and lip against her’s and used every argument to bring her to accept his point of view.
wahine-oma’o had a mind of her own and though not at all averse to love and its doings and though very much drawn to this lover in particular, she decidedly objected to compromising her relations with hiiaka, but above all, with the dread mistress of the volcano, with whom she must ere long make reckoning. like pele, wahine-oma’o permitted the kisses of lohiau for a time, but, knowing that passion grows by what it feeds on, she presently cut short his rations and told him to behave himself, enforcing her denial with the unanswerable argument that she was well persuaded that they would be seen by hiiaka. it was even so. it was worse. hiiaka did not content herself with throwing temptation before lohiau, as one might place raw meat before a hungry dog; by some witchery of psychologic power she stirred him up to do and dare, yet at the same time she impelled wahine-oma’o to accept, but only a certain degree, for she carefully set bounds to their conduct. and this, be it understood, is but the opening act of a campaign in which hiiaka resolves to avenge herself on pele.
when at length hiiaka centered her attention on the actions of the people in the canoe, it needed but a glance to tell her that the contagium planted in the soil of lohiau’s mind had worked to a charm. her own description—though in figures that seem high-wrought and foreign to our imaginations—had better tell the tale:
aluna au o poha-kea,
wehe ka ilio4 i kona kapa; [165]
hanai alualu5 i ke kula o miki-kala,6
i ke kula o puha-maló6
hakaká, kipikipi o kai-a-ulu7 me ke kanáka;
ua ku’i-ku’i wale a ha’ina8 na ihu;
ua ka i ka u me ka waimaka,
i ke kula o lualua-lei,9 e!
ku’u lei aloha no olua no, e!
translation
i stand ahigh on poha-kea;
the dog of storm strips off his robe;
a zephyr fans yon heated plain of
miki-kala and puha-maló:—
wild strife ’tween the man and the sea breeze:
i see noses flattened, broken,
fountains become of water and tears!
this my garland of love to you two!
hiiaka’s voice had the precious quality of carrying her words and making them audible to a great distance, when she so willed. her song, therefore, did not, on this occasion, waste itself in the wilderness of space. the caution it imposed had its effect. lohiau and wahine-oma’o calmed their passionate contentions and proceeded discreetly on their way. having passed kalae-loa,10 their canoe swung into that inverted arc of oahu’s coastline, in the middle of which glisten, like two parted rows of white teeth, the coral bluffs that were the only guard at the mouth of pearl lochs.
before descending from her vantage ground on pohakea, hiiaka indulged her fancy in a song that was of a different strain. looking towards hilo, she describes the rivers, swollen by heavy rains, rushing impetuously along in bounding torrents, [166]while men and women leap into the wild current and are lifted on its billows as by the ocean waves:
a makani kua-mú11 lehua ko uka;
ke ho’o-wa’a-wa’a a’e la
e u? i hana-kahi,12 e-e:
ke u? la, u? mai la hilo
a moku kahawai, piha akú la
na hale lehua13 a ke kai, e-e!
translation
kua-mú pays toll to the forests—
cloud-columns that veer and sway,
freighted with rain for hilo,
the hilo of hana-kahi.
the channels are full to the brim—
a tide that will flood ocean’s caverns,
the home of the mermaid lehua.
after a moment’s pause she resumed, though in quite a different strain:
aia no ke ’kua la i uka;
ke hoá la i ka papa a enaena,
a pulelo14 mai ka ohi’a o ka lua;
maewa15 ke po’o, pu’u, newa i ka makani,
i ka hoonaue ia e ka awaawa, e-e!
translation
the god is at work in the hills;
she has fired the plain oven-hot; [167]
the forest-fringe of the pit is aflame;—
fire-tongues, fire-globes, that sway in the wind—
the fierce bitter breath of the goddess!
as the canoe drew near to the appointed rendezvous at pu’u-loa, hiiaka lifted her voice in a chanting song addressed to lohiau and wahine-oma’o:
ku’u aikane i ke awa lau16 o pu’uloa,
mai ke kula o pe’e-kaua,17 ke noho oe,
e noho kaua e kui, e lei i ka pua o ke kauno’a,18
i ka pua o ke akuli-kuli,19 o ka wili-wili;20
o ka iho’na o kau-pe’e i kane-hili,21
ua hili22 au; akahi no ka hili o ka la pomaika’i;
aohe mo-ewa’a23 o ka po, e moe la nei.
e lohiau ipo, e wahine-oma’o,
hoe ’a mai ka wa’a i a’e aku au.
translation
we meet at ewa’s leaf-shaped lagoon, friends;
let us sit, if you will, on this lea
and bedeck us with wreaths of kauno’a,
of akuli-kuli and wili-wili.
my soul went astray in this solitude;
it lost the track for once, in spite of luck, [168]
as i came down the road to kau-pe’a.
no nightmare dream was that which tricked my soul.
this way, dear friends; turn the canoe this way;
paddle hither and let me embark.
hiiaka again in command, the tiger in lohiau’s nature slunk away into its kennel, allowing his energies to spend themselves in useful work. under his vigorous paddle the little craft once more moved like a thing of life and long before night found itself off the harbor of kou, the name then applied to what we now call honolulu.
1aina, to furnish food. ↑
2lahui, wholly, entirely. ↑
3huki, to fetch a wide course; to deviate from a direct course. ↑
4ilio, dog. it is explained that the meaning covered by this figure is a storm-cloud and that the stripping off of its garment, wehe … i kona kapa, meant its break up into the fleecy white clouds of fair weather. it seems that if the head of this cloud-dog pointed to the west it meant rain, if to the east, fair weather. ↑
5hanai alualu, to fan with a gentle breeze. alu-alu is another form for oluolu. ↑
6miki-kala and puha-malo, names of places along the coast of oahu in the region under observation. ↑
7kai-a-ulu, a wind felt on the leeward side of oahu. ↑
8ha’ina na ihu. ha’i, to break or be broken. the hawaiian kiss was a flattening of nose against nose. the breaking of noses, as here, therefore, means excessive kissing. ↑
9lualua-lei, the name of a plain in this region. ↑
10 barber’s point. ↑
11kua-mú, said to be the name of a wind, the blowing of which caused heavy rain in the woods back of hilo. ↑
12hana-kahi, an ancient king of hilo, frequently mentioned in poetry, whose name is used to designate the district. ↑
13hale lehua, an evident allusion to the goddess, or mermaid, moana-nui-ka-lehua. she was a relative of pele and had her habitation in the ocean caverns of ie-ie-waena, the channel between oahu and kauai. her story belongs to the time when the sun-hero mawi was performing his wonderful exploits. (see account given on p. 104.) ↑
14pulelo, a word descriptive of the tremor of the flames that wrapped the trees. ↑
15maewa, to fork, or branch, said of the flames. ↑
16awa lau, leaf-shaped lagoon; a highly appropriate epithet, when applied to that system of lochs, channels and estuaries that form the famous “pearl lochs,” as any one acquainted with the place will admit. ↑
17pe’e-kaua, the name applied to a portion of the plain west of pu’u-loa. ↑
18kau-no’a, a parasitic plant (cassytha filiformis) consisting of wiry stems that cling to other plants by means of small protuberances or suckers. ↑
19akuli-kuli, a low, vine-like plant, said to have fleshy leaves and minute flowers. ↑
20wili-wili (erythrina monosperma), a tree having light, corky wood, much used in making the outrigger floats for canoes. its flowers, of a ruddy flame-color, make a splendid decoration. ↑
21kane-hili, a name applied to a part of the plain west of pu’u-loa[pu’uloa?]. notice the repetition of the word hili in the next verse. hili means astray, or distressed. ↑
22hili, to go astray, to lose one’s way. assonance by word-repetition was a favorite device of hawaiian poetry. the hawaiian poet did not use rhyme. ↑
23mo-ewa’a, literally a canoe-dream. to dream of a canoe was an omen of ill luck. it was also unlucky to dream of having gained some valued possession and then wake to the disappointing reality.
