a formal genealogical
chant.

Such a series is illustrated in the genealogy embedded in the famous
song to aggrandize the family of the famous chief Kualii, which carries
back the chiefly line of Hawaii through 26 generations to Wakea and
Papa, ancestors of the race.

"Hulihonua the man,
Keakahulilani the woman,
Laka the man, Kepapaialeka the woman,"

runs the song, the slight variations evidently fitting the sound to the
movement of the recitative.

In the eleventh section of the "Song of Creation" the poet says:

She that lived up in the heavens and Piolani,
She that was full of enjoyments and lived in the heavens,
Lived up there with Kii and became his wife,
Brought increase to the world;

and he proceeds to the enumeration of her "increase":

Kamahaina was born a man,
Kamamule his brother,
Kamaainau was born next,
Kamakulua was born, the youngest a woman.

Following this family group come a long series, more than 650 pairs of
so-called husbands and wives. After the first 400 or so, the enumeration
proceeds by variations upon a single name. We have first some 50 _Kupo_
(dark nights)--"of wandering," "of wrestling," "of littleness," etc.; 60
or more _Polo_; 50 _Liili_; at least 60 _Alii_ (chiefs);
followed by _Mua_ and _Loi_ in about the same proportion.

At the end of this series we read that--

Storm was born, Tide was born,
Crash was born, and also bursts of bubbles.
Confusion was born, also rushing, rumbling shaking earth.

So closes the "second night of Wakea," which, it is interesting to note,
ends like a charade in the death of Kupololiilialiimualoipo, whose
nomenclature has been so vastly accumulating through the 200 or 300 last
lines. Notice how the first word _Kupo_ of the series opens and swallows
all the other five.

Such recitative and, as it were, symbolic use of genealogical chants
occurs over and over again. That the series is often of emotional rather
than of historical value is suggested by the wordplays and by the fact
that the hero tales do not show what is so characteristic of Icelandic
saga--a care to record the ancestry of each character as it is
introduced into the story. To be sure, they commonly begin with the
names of the father and mother of the hero, and their setting; but in
the older mythological tales these are almost invariably _Ku_ and
_Hina_, a convention almost equivalent to the phrase "In the olden
time"; but, besides fixing the di