To compare the gods of the Hawaiian pantheon with those of
classic Greece, the sphere occupied by Laka corresponds most
nearly to that filled by Terpsichore and Euterpe, the muses,
respectively, of dance and of song. Lono, in one song spoken
of as the husband of Laka, had features in common with
Apollo.

That other gods, Kane, Ku, Kanaloa,[26] with Lono,
Ku-pulupulu,[27] and the whole swarm of godlings that peopled
the wildwood, were also invited to favor the performances
with their presence can be satisfactorily explained on the
ground, first, that all the gods were in a sense members of
one family, related to each other by intermarriage, if not by
the ties of kinship; and, second, by the patent fact of that
great underlying cause of bitterness and strife among
immortals as well as mortals, jealousy. It would have been an
eruptive occasion of heart-burning and scandal if by any
mischance a privileged one should have had occasion to feel
slighted; and to have failed in courtesy to that countless
host of wilderness imps and godlings, the _Kini Akua_,[28]
mischievous and irreverent as the monkeys of India, would
indeed have been to tempt a disaster.

While it is true that the testimony of the various
_kumu-hula_, teachers of the hula, and devotees of the art of
the hula, so far as the author has talked with them, has been
overwhelmingly to the effect that Laka was the one and only
divine patron of the art known to them, there has been a
small number equally ready to assert that there were those
who observed the cult of the goddess Kapo and worshiped her
[Page 25] as the patron of the hula. The positive testimony of these
witnesses must be reckoned as of more weight than the
negative testimony of a much larger number, who either have
not seen or will not look at the other side of the shield. At
any rate, among the prayers before the kuahu, of which there
are others yet to be presented, will be found several
addressed to Kapo as the divine patron of the hula.

[Footnote 25: The teacher, a leader and priest of the hula.
The modern school-maste