ce of poetry. Guided by this
generalization, it may be said that Hawaiian poetry was the
nurse and pedagogue of that stammering infant, Hawaiian
music; that the words of the mele came before its rhythmic
utterance in song; and that the first singers were the
priests and the eulogists. Hawaiian poetry is far ahead of
Hawaiian song in the power to move the feelings. A few words
suffice the poet with which to set the picture before one's
eyes, and one picture quickly follows another; whereas the
musical attachment remains weak and colorless, reminding one
of the nursery pictures, in which a few skeletal lines
represent the human frame.

Let us now for refreshment and in continued pursuit of our
subject listen to a song in the language and spirit of
old-time Hawaii, composed, however, in the middle of the
nineteenth century. It is given as arranged by Miss Lillian
Byington, who took it down as she heard it sung by an old
Hawaiian woman in the train of Queen Liliuokalani, and as the
author has since heard it sung by Miss Byington's pupils of
the Kamehameha School for Girls. The song has been slightly
idealized, perhaps, by trimming away some of the superfluous
i'i, but not more than is necessary to make it highly
acceptable to our ears and not so much as to take from it the
plaintive bewitching tone that pervades the folk-music of
Hawaii. The song, the mele, is not in itself much--a hint, a
sketch, a sweep of the brush, a lilt of the imagination, a
connotation of multiple images which no jugglery of literary
art can transfer into any foreign speech. Its charm, like
that of all folk-songs and of all romance, lies in its
mysterious tug at the heartstrings.
[Page 162]

VIII--He Inoa no Kamehameha
(Old Mele--Kindness of H.R.H. Liliuokalani)
Arranged by LILLIAN BYINGTON
[Music:]

_He Inoa no Kamehameha_

Aia i Waipi'o[315] Paka'alana,[316]
Paepae[317] kapu ia o Liloa.[318]
He aloha ka wahine pi'i ka pali,[319]
Puili ana