Hawaiian Historical Legends. William D. Westervelt

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СКАЧАТЬ She put her fingers in the water and sprinkled drops over the sea.

      Out in the ocean under the moving surface was a boat, its mast coming up through the waves. In a little while they saw men standing in the boat. These were the brothers of Aukele. After the welcome, he gave them lands and homes.

      In that strange far-off land of the ancestors—the mysterious "Floating Island"—the "Hidden Island of Kane," it is said they still live under the rule of their younger brother.

      Aukele thought he would like to see his parents once more, so he went to the far-away Helani—but the land was desolate. The parents were gone, the people had disappeared, the houses had all decayed, and the land was covered with a forest.

      Only a dragon was left—one of the family of the "Self-reliant Dragon." He discovered her body fast in the coral reef near the shore. He thought she was dead, but he stood up and stamped with full strength and broke the coral so that the dragon was free. He saw the body moving, but the dragon was very weak and near death.

      He was sorry for her, remembering that it was by the aid of dragon powers he had gone into the heavens and from the deep pit of the skies secured the water of life. Therefore he provided food and gave new life to the dragon. He asked about his parents and their gods, and the desolation of the land.

      The dragon told him how the entire household of gods, dragons and men had found a new home, in the Islands of Oahu and Hawaii. She told how "the child adopted or brought up by the gods," and the Maiden of the Golden Clouds, had been taken by the Self-reliant Dragon to Oahu, and how all the rest had gone, leaving her as a guard in the old land of his birth and childhood.

      Aukele went back to the legendary land, the "Hidden Island of Kane," and there lived among the ghost gods who welcome the dead as they escape from wandering over the islands and fly by the path of the sunset back to the home of the most distant ancestors—the mysterious lands in the skies of the western seas.

      Here he and his brothers are high chiefs of the au-makuas, the ghost gods of Hawaii, who wait to welcome and give peace to the spirits of the dead.

       Footnote

* This is one of the most ancient legends in Hawaiian annals.

      IV

       A VIKING OF THE PACIFIC

      HISTORY is frequently legendary. That historian is incompetent who deliberately ignores tradition and fable. A nation founded in the sunlight of civilisation cannot have a legendary past, but it must depend many times upon the cloudy memory of individuals. Legends are the indistinct memories of nations, and are of real value when there is any opportunity for comparison. Early Norse history was told in song legends. The sagas of the Vikings are rivalled in some measure by the meles of the Hawaiians. The Hawaiians have both the chant—the mele, and the tradition—the olelo. From these come Hawaiian ancient history. The Vikings, "sea kings," as they are often named, the "wickel-ings," as Froude calls them, the men who sailed out from the "vicks," the fjords of the Scandinavian coast, were brave mariners. They swept the European coast; they infested Mediterranean waters; they found the North Atlantic islands. They made themselves at home in Sneeland (Snowland), now Iceland and Greenland. They named the countries newly discovered after their own fancies, as Flatland, Woodland, and Vinland, for Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, respectively.

      The Polynesian folklore abounds in stories of remarkable men, bold expeditions, stirring adventures and voyages to far-off lands. The Vikings of the Pacific gave to their foreign lands the names by which these lands were then known, and by which they are known to-day.

      In the long Hawaiian chant of Kumu Honua, "the first created," there is a part devoted to Hawaii-loa, the first sea-king of the Polynesians. He is reported as making long journeys and discovering the Hawaiian Islands. Besides this chant there are many legends and references which make him an important ancestor among Hawaiians, an ancestor of islands rather than of families. He lived in the "land of the handsome or golden god, Kane." To the north lay the land Ulu-nui or "the Great Ulu," possibly Ur of Chaldea. His home was near the "green precipiced paradise" of Hawaiian legend, the place where the water of life gave forth healing even for the dead.

      Hawaii-loa was a noted fisherman. He launched out into deep waters. He fished for new worlds and found them. From the Great Ulu to Java, from Java to Jilolo, and from Jilolo far out into the eastern Pacific, Hawaii-loa sailed. His relative, Ti-i, also launched out into the deep seas. Ti-i went almost directly east from the old home, and found the Society Islands. These he made his home, according to the Society Island legends, becoming the creator of the islands.

      Hawaii-loa sailed to the northeast, following "Iao," Jupiter, as the morning star. Iao was a favorite guiding star among the Hawaiians. Five of the planets were known by the sea-rovers. The planets were called "Na Hoku hele"—"the going stars." Mars was known as "Hoku ula," "the red star." "Na hoku paa" were "the fastened stars, immovable in the heavens." The name "Iao" is given to one of the mountains of the Island of Maui.

      Hawaii-loa found the fire islands—the islands somewhat like the old Java home, luxuriant and volcanic. He named the large island Hawa-i-i— "the little or the burning Java."

      The large island was full of delight to the bold navigator, and he determined to bring his family to this new land for their permanent home. He took them from "the land where his forefathers dwelt before him." He sailed through the "dotted sea," the sea with many islands lying near his old ancestral home, "the rainy Zaba"—the modern Zaba or Saba of the Arabian seacoast—from which his own name, "Hawa," is easily derived. On his journey back and forth he passed through a sea which delighted his heart as a fisherman—"a sea where the fishes run." He must have found excellent deep-sea fishing. He crossed the "many-coloured ocean" and the "sky-blue sea." He revelled in the beauty of the sun rising and setting in glorious colours on the restless waves. On he sailed with his family until he came to Hawaii— "the burning Java," the land of volcanoes and earthquakes and of luxuriant valleys and fertile seacoasts.

      Fornander suggests that Hawaii is derived from Java and Java from the Arabian Saba.

      Evidently a Polynesian chief of high rank gathered a number of adherents or members of his tribe, and sailed eastward over the Pacific, about the beginning of the Christian era. His descendants, or at least such portion of his family as did not follow him on his voyage, seem to have moved from Java to the Molucca Islands and settled in Jilolo.

      It is said that after he brought his family to Hawaii, new islands sprang out of the sea, well wooded and well watered. These he divided among his children.

      When the later sea-rovers came to Hawaii, possibly in the fifth or sixth century, they found the islands already inhabited by people of their own race, and yet apparently without a chief—probably a servant class. If we sift the legends and then assume that in the course of three or four hundred years the family of the chief, Hawaii-loa, became extinct in Hawaii, leaving only the servants on the islands, we have at least a probable explanation of the coming of the so-called little people, or fairies, from the Southern Pacific to Hawaii.

      The South Pacific islanders called their servants, or laborers, the Manahune people.

      The fairies were known in the Hawaiian legends as the Menehunes. Sometimes they were credited with powers like the gnomes of old England. They were supposed to work only at night. A very ancient stone water-wall along the side of one of the swift-flowing Hawaiian rivers has no tradition or history save that the Menehune people built it in one night. Another very ancient stone wall around a large fish pond is referred to the Menehunes, who did not finish their work СКАЧАТЬ