ark better than any comments can do the superstitious
devotion of the old-timers to formalism, their remoteness
from that free touch of social and artistic pleasure, the
lack of which we moderns often lament in our own lives and
sigh for as a lost art, conceiving it to have been once the
possession of "the children of nature."

The author has already hinted at the form and character of
the entertainments with which hula-folk sometimes beguiled
their professional interludes. Fortunately the author is able
to illustrate by means of a song the very form of
entertainment they provided for themselves on such an
occasion. The following mele, cantillated with an
accompaniment of expressive gesture, is one that was actually
given at an awa-drinking bout indulged in by hula-folk. The
author has an account of its recital at Kahuku, island of
Oahu, so late as the year 1849, during a circuit of that
[Page 130] island made by King Kamehameha III. This mele is reckoned as
belonging to the ordinary repertory of the hula; but to which
particular form of the dance it was devoted has not been
learned:

_Mele_

Ua ona o Kane i ka awa;
Ua kau ke keha[281] i ka uluna;
Ua hi'o-lani[282] i ka moena.
Kipu mai la i ke kapa o ka noe.
5 Noe-noe na hoku o ka lani--
Imo-imo mai la i ka po a'e-a'e.
Mahana-lua[283] na kukui a Lanikaula,[274]
He kaula no Kane.[285]
Meha na pali o Wai-pi'o
10 I ke kani mau o Kiha-pu;
A ono ole ka awa a ke alii
I ke kani mau o Kiha-pu;
Moe ole kona po o ka Hooilo;
Uluhua, a uluhua,
15 I ka mea nana e hull a loaa
I kela kupua ino i ka pali,
Olali la, a olali.

[Translation]

_Song_

Kane is drunken with awa;
His head is laid on the pillow;
His body stretched on the mat.
A trumpet sounds through the fog,
5 Dimmed are the stars in the sky;
When the night is clear, how they twinkle!