d the doings of the volcano goddess Pele and her
compeers. Thus in the cantillations of the old-time hula we
find a ready-made anthology that includes every species of
composition in the whole range of Hawaiian poetry. This
epic[1] of Pele was chiefly a more or less detached series of
poems forming a story addressed not to the closet-reader, but
to the eye and ear and heart of the assembled chiefs and
people; and it was sung. The Hawaiian song, its note of joy
par excellence, was the _oli_; but it must be noted that in
every species of Hawaiian poetry, _mele_--whether epic or
eulogy or prayer, sounding through them all we shall find the
lyric note.

[Footnote 1: It might be termed a handful of lyrics strung on
an epic thread.]

The most telling record of a people's intimate life is the
record which it unconsciously makes in its songs. This record
which the Hawaiian people have left of themselves is full and
specific. When, therefore, we ask what emotions stirred the
heart of the old-time Hawaiian as he approached the great
themes of life and death, of ambition and jealousy, of sexual
passion, of romantic love, of conjugal love, and parental
love, what his attitude toward nature and the dread forces of
earthquake and storm, and the mysteries of spirit and the
hereafter, we shall find our answer in the songs and prayers
and recitations of the hula.

The hula, it is true, has been unfortunate in the mode and
manner of its introduction to us moderns. An institution of
divine, that is, religious, origin, the hula in modern times
[Page 8] has wandered so far and fallen so low that foreign and
critical esteem has come to associate it with the riotous and
passionate ebullitions of Polynesian kings and the amorous
posturing of their voluptuaries. We must make a just
distinction, however, between the gestures and bodily
contortions presented by the men and women, the actors in the
hula, and their uttered words. "The voice is Jacob's voice,
but the hands are the hands of Esau." In truth, the actors in
the hula no longer suit the action to the word.