HIIAKA EXPERIENCES KOOLAU WEATHER
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Emerson, Nathaniel Bright
Hiiaka found many things to try her patience and ruffle her temper in Pali-Koolau: Squalls, heavy with rain-drops picked up by the wind in its passage across the broad Pacific, slatted against her and mired the path; but worse than any freak of the weather were her encounters with that outlaw thing, the mo’o; not the bold robber creature of Hawaii which took to the wilds, as if in recognition of its own outlawry, but that meaner skulk, whose degenerate spirit had parted with its last atom of virtuous courage and clung to human society only as a vampire, unwilling to forego its parasitic hold on humanity. It was in the mood and spirit begotten of such experiences that she sang:
Ino Koolau, e, ino Koolau!
Ai kena i ka ua o Koolau:
Ke ua mai la i Ma-elieli,
Ke hoowa’awa’a mai la i Heeia,
Ke kupá la ka ua i ke kai.
Ha’a hula le’a ka ua
I Ahui-manu, ka ua hooni,
Hoonaue i ka pu’u ko’a,
Ka ua poai-hale1 o Kaha-lu’u.
Lu’u-lu’u e, lu’u-lu’u iho nei au
I ka puolo waimaka o ka onohi—
Ke kulu iho nei, e.
TRANSLATION
Vile, vile is this Koolau weather:
One soaks in the rain till he’s full.
The rain, it pours at Ma-eli-eli;
It gutters the land at He-eia;
It lashes the sea with a whip.
The rain, it dances in glee
At Ahui-manu, moving
And piling the coral in heaps,
Shifting from side to side of the house,
This whisking rain of Kaha-lu’u.
Heavy and sad, alas, am I,
Mine eyes, a bundle of tears,
Are full to o’erflowing.
As they approached Kua-loa, the huge mo’o-dragon, Moko-li’i, reared himself up and, pluming and vaunting himself, sought to terrify them and prevent their passage. Hiiaka did not flinch in her attack. When she had killed the monster, she set up his flukes as a landmark which now forms the rock known to this day as Moko-li’i. The body of the dragon she disposed in such a way that it helped form the road-bed of the traveled highway. After this achievement she vented her feelings in an exultant song:
Ki’e-ki’e Kane-hoa-lani
Au Moko-li’i2 i ke kai,
I keiki, i Makahiapo na Koolau:
Lau Koolau, kena wale i ka ino;
He ino loa no, e!
TRANSLATION
Kane-hoa lifts to the sky;
Moko-li’i swims in the ocean—
The first-born child of Koolau—
A legion of fiends is Koolau,
Eager for mischief, subtle of trick.
Coming to where the deep and narrow gorge of Ka-liu-wa’a valley opens out, Hiiaka discerned the nature-carved lineaments of her ancestor Kauhi ke-i-maka-o-ka-lani, as he was epitheted, a rocky form set in the pali, but veiled to ordinary sight by a fringe of ti and kukui. Its eye-sockets, moist with the dripping dew of heaven, gleamed upon her with a wondrous longing, which she answered in song: