ssence, has mostly exhaled. In the sudden
transition from the tabu system to the new order of things
that came in with the death of Kamehameha in 1819, the old
fashion of song soon found itself antiquated and
outdistanced. Its survival, so far as it did survive, was
rather as a memorial and remembrance of the past than as a
register of the living emotions of the present.

The new music, with its _pa, ko, li_--answering to our do,
re, mi[304]--was soon in everybody's mouth. From the first it
was evidently destined to enact a role different from that of
the old cantillation; none the less the musical ideas that
came in with it, the air of freedom from tabu and priestcraft
it breathed, and the diatonic scale, the highway along which
it marched to conquest, soon produced a noticeable reaction
in all the musical efforts of the people. This new seed, when
it had become a vigorous plant, began to push aside the old
indigenous stock, to cover it with new growths, and,
incredible as it may seem, to inoculate it with its own
pollen, thus producing a cross which to-day is accepted in
certain quarters as the genuine article of Hawaiian song.
Even now, the people of northwestern America are listening
with demonstrative interest to songs which they suppose to be
those of the old hula, but which in reality have no more
connection with that institution than our negro minstrelsy
has to do with the dark continent.

[Footnote 304: The early American missionaries to Hawaii named
the musical notes of the scale _pa, ko, li, ha, no, la, mi_.]

The one regrettable fact, from a historical point of view, is
that a record was not made of indigenous Hawaiian song before
this process of substitution and adulteration had begun. It
is no easy matter now to obtain the data for definite
knowledge of the subject.

While the central purpose of this chapter will be a study of
the music native to old Hawaii, and especially of that
produced in the halau, Hawaiian music of later times and of
the present day can not be entirely neglected; nor will it be
without its va