ith the fragrance
Exhaled from the garden Ohele.
Your love comes to me a tornado;
It has rapt away my whole body,
The heart you once sealed as your own,
10 There planted the seed of desire.
Thought you 'twas the tree of Hopoe,
This tree, whose bloom you would pluck?

What is the argument of this poem? A passion-stricken swain,
or perhaps a woman, cries to _Malua_ to bring relief to his
love-smart, to give drink to the parched _mamane_
buds--emblems of human feeling. In contrast to his own
distress, he points to the birds caroling in the trees,
reveling in the nectar of _lehua_ bloom, intoxicated with the
scent of nature's garden. What answer does the lovelorn swain
receive from the nymph he adores? In lines 11 and 12 she
banteringly asks him if he took her to be like the
traditional lehua tree of Hopoe, of which men stood in awe as
a sort of divinity, not daring to pluck its flowers? It is as
if the woman had asked--if the poet's meaning is rightly
interpreted--"Did you really think me plighted to vestal
vows, a tree whose bloom man was forbidden to pluck?"
[Page 116]

XV.--THE HULA KA-LAAU

The hula _ka-laau_ (_ka_, to strike; _laau_, wood) was named
from the instruments of wood used in producing the
accompaniment, a sort of xylophone, in which one piece of
resonant wood was struck against another. Both divisions of
the performers, the hoopaa and the olapa, took part and each
division was provided with the instruments. The cantillation
was done sometimes by one division alone, sometimes by both
divisions in unison, or one division would answer the other,
a responsive chanting that was termed _haawe aku, haawe
mai_--"to give, to return."

Ellis gives a quotable description of this hula, which he
calls the "hura ka raau:"

Five musicians advanced first, each, with a staff in his left
hand, five or six feet long, about three or four inches in
diameter at one end, and tapering off to a point at the
other. In his right hand he held a small stick of h