HIIAKA VISITS PELE-ULA AT KOU—THE HULA KILU
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Emerson, Nathaniel Bright
I ko’e ia e Hula-ia a oki:
Oki laula ka uka o Puna,
Lulumi i ka pua hau o Malu-aka.
Ho’i kao’o i ka wai olohia;
Kinakina’i e eha ka pua o ka hala, la.
Hala ke aloha, hoomanao iaia i akea,
I ka’awale ho’i kau oni’na—
Oni’na mau ho’i, e: eia oe.
TRANSLATION
Thou mount of enchantment. Haupu,
By the dancers greatly beset.—
The whole face of Puna o’errun,
Where clusters the bloom of the hau—
I, back-lame and sore in defeat,
Shall master the smart of my wrong.
The love-bird has flown into space.
Away from this wriggle and squirm.
You may twist, you may turn, you are here!
Lohiau had broken with Pele-ula; his last hope and appeal was to Hiiaka. He stood before her waiting her fateful decision. Will she consent to turn the canoe-prow and fly back to Kaua’i with him? He had won the woman’s heart in her, but not the deity that controlled her nature. The chain that bound her to the Woman of the Pit was too strong to be broken by any mere human appeal. Lohiau had failed in his play with the kilu; he now saw that he had also failed in his attempt to play with this human heart. The game was up; he sat down.
When Lohiau had retired in defeat, it became the turn of Wahine-oma’o to entertain the company—Wahine-oma’o, faithful, rustic soul, that she was, whose only acquaintance with this fine art was what she had picked up from seeing the performances of her mistress and master. Her wits did not desert her and were equal to the occasion: best of all, she had the wit to recognize her own limitations. Instead of pitching her song to some far-fetched hyperbole, she travestied the whole performance in a wholesome bit of nonsense that drifts down to us across the centuries as a most delicious take-off:
O ku, o ka o Wahine-oma’o.
Wahine ia Lohiau-ipo!
TRANSLATION
The flim and the flam
Of the Woman-in-green,
Handmaid to the man
Who loveth the Queen.
If Wahine-oma’o had, of set purpose, planned an ironical take off of the hula kilu, or rather of Lohiau’s manner of acting, she could hardly have bettered her performance. Her dancing was a grotesque ambling and mincing from one side of the theater to the other. The unaffected good humor of the girl robbed the arrow of her wit of all venom while detracting not one whit from its effectiveness.
Towards morning the audience made clamorous demands that Hiiaka, the woman whom their suffrage had declared to be the most beautiful that had ever stood before them, should present herself before them once again. Hiiaka willingly responded to this encore:
Ku’u kane i ka makani hau alia
O Maka-huna i Hua-wá, e:
Wa iho la; ke wa wale mai la no
Kaua hilahila moe awa-kea
Iluna o ka laau.
Ho’olaau mai ana ke ki’i,
Kaunu mai ana ia’u ka moe—
E moe ho’i, e!
TRANSLATION
Hot breath from the sea-sand waste—
Love hid from day in a thicket of hau—