kind of technique, the peculiarity of which was a
sustained and continuous outpouring of the breath to the end
of a certain period, when the lungs again drank their fill.
This seems to have been an inheritance from the old religious
style of prayer-recitation, which required the priest to
repeat the whole incantation to its finish with the outpour
of one lungful of breath. Satisfactory utterance of those old
prayer-songs of the Aryans, the _mantras_, was conditioned
likewise on its being a one-breath performance. A logical
analogy may be seen between all this and that unwritten law,
or superstition, which made it imperative for the heroes and
demigods, _kupua_, of Hawaii's mythologic age to discontinue
any unfinished work on the coming of daylight.[305]

[Footnote 305: The author can see no reason for supposing that
this prolonged utterance had anything to do with that Hindoo
practice belonging to the _yoga_, the exercise of which
consists in regulating the breath.]
[Page 140]
When one listens for the first time to the musical utterance
of a Hawaiian poem, it may seem only a monotonous onflow of
sounds faintly punctuated by the primary rhythm that belongs
to accent, but lacking those milestones of secondary rhythm
which set a period to such broader divisions as distinguish
rhetorical and musical phrasing. Further attention will
correct this impression and show that the Hawaiians paid
strict attention not only to the lesser rhythm which deals
with the time and accent of the syllable, but also to that
more comprehensive form which puts a limit to the verse.

With the Hawaiians musical phrasing was arranged to fit the
verse of the mele, not to express a musical idea. The
cadencing of a musical phrase in Hawaiian song was marked by
a peculiarity all its own. It consisted of a prolonged
trilling or fluctuating movement called _i'i_, in which the
voice went up and down in a weaving manner, touching the main
note that formed the framework of the melody, then springing
away from it for some short interval--a half of a step, or
even some shorter int