Pele and Hiiaka: A Myth From Hawaii

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 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.)

Hiiaka now pays attention to the doings of the people on the canoe in the offing. It is necessary to explain that, on landing 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: