KAPO-ULA-KINA’U, A RELATIVE OF HIIAKA—THE MAIMED GIRL MANA-MANA-IA-KALU-EA
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Emerson, Nathaniel Bright
The canoe-men, having used their utmost expedition in landing the freight and hauling up the canoe and getting it under cover, hastened to meet the two women at the rendezvous they had suggested. But they were nowhere to be found. They had disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed them up. When Pi’i-ke-a-nui asked the people of the village as to the whereabouts of the two young women who had just now landed as passengers from the canoe, they one and all denied having set eyes upon them.
Hiiaka had planned a visit with her sister Kapo; but, on reaching Wailuku, the house was empty; Kapo and her husband Pua-nui had but just started to make a ceremonious call on Ole-pau, a famous chief of the district. The receding figure of Kapo was already hazy in the distance, so that it seemed more than doubtful if the words of Hiiaka’s message reached the ears for which they were intended:
He ahui hala1 ko Kapo-ula-kina’u,2
Ko ka pili kaumaha;
I ka pili a hala, la, ha-la!
Hala olua, aohe makamaka o ka hale
E kipa aku ai la ho’i i ko hale,
I kou hale, e-e!
TRANSLATION
The clustered hala is Kapo’s shield,
An omen portending disaster.
The traveler came in your absence;
Both of you gone, no one at home—
No lodge for the traveler within,
No hospitality within!
Here is another version of this mele by Hiiaka (furnished by Pelei-oholani). As the version previously given is confessedly imperfect, in part conjectural, there having been several hiatuses in the text, I think it well to give an authorized version, though very different:
He ahui hala na ka makani:3
Hala ka ua,4 noho i na pali, e—
I ka pali aku i Pua-lehei,5 e.
Loli iho la, pulu elo i ka ua, e.
Aohe makamaka e kipa aku ai
I kou hale, e;
E noho ana i ke kai o Kapeku;
E hoolono i ka uwalo, e!
TRANSLATION
A hala bunch, snatched by the wind
That blows from the medicine man,
Pushing the rain to Pua-lehei:
Cold is the traveler and soaking wet,
No friend to give welcome and cheer;
House empty—gone to the seashore;
No one to heed my entreaty.
As Hiiaka passed along the cliff that overlooks the wave-swept beach at Hono-lua, a pitiful sight met her eye, the figure of a woman crippled from birth—without hands. Yet, in spite of her maimed condition, the brave spirit busied herself gathering shell-fish; and when a tumbling wave rolled across the beach she made herself a partner in its sport and gleefully retreated, skipping and dancing to the words of a song:
Aloha wale ka i’a lamalama o ku’u aina, la,
Ka i’a kahiko pu no me ka wahine.
Lilo ke hoa, ko’eko’e ka po;
Akahi kona la o aloha mai, e-e!
Aloha Kona, ku’u aina i ka pohu, e-e!
TRANSLATION
How dear the torch-caught fish of my home-land,