There was a peculiar class of hulas named after animals, in each one of which the song-maker developed some characteristic of the animal in a fanciful way, while the actors themselves aimed to portray the animal’s movements in a mimetic fashion. To this class belongs the hula kolea. 411 It was a peculiar dance, performed, as an informant asserts, by actors who took the kneeling posture, all being placed in one row and facing in the same direction. There were gestures without stint, arms, heads, and bodies moving in a fashion that seemed to imitate in a far-off way the movements of the bird itself. There was no instrumental accompaniment to the music. The following mele is one that was given with this hula:
Kolea kai piha! 412
I aha mai nei?
Ku-nou 413 mai nei.
E aha kakou?
5E ai kakou. 414
Nohea ka ai? 415
No Kahiki mai.[415]
Hiki mai ka Lani,[415]
Olina Hawaii,
10Mala’ela’e ke ala,
Nou, e ka Lani.
Puili pu ke aloha,
Pili me ka’u manu. 416
Ka puana a ka moe?
15Moe oe a hoolana
Ka hali’a i hiki mai;
Ooe pu me a’u
Noho pu i ka wai aliali.
Hai’na ia ka pauna.
20O ka hua o ke kolea, aia i Kahiki. 417
Hiki mai kou aloha, mae’ele au.
Footnote 411: (return) The plover.
Footnote 412: (return) Kolea kai piha. The kolea is a feeder along the shore, his range limited to a narrower strip as the tide rises. The snare was one of the methods used by the Hawaiians for the capture of this bird. In his efforts to escape when snared he made that futile bobbing motion with his head that must be familiar to every hunter.
Footnote 413: (return) Usually the bobbing motion, ku-nou, is the prelude to flight; but the snared bird can do nothing more, a fact which suggests to the poet the nodding and bowing of two lovers when they meet.
Footnote 414: (return) E ai kakou. Literally, let us eat. While this figure of speech often has a sensual meaning, it does not necessarily imply grossness. Hawaiian literalness and narrowness of vocabulary is not to be strained to the overthrow of poetical sentiment.
Footnote 415: (return) To the question Nohea ka ai?, whence the food? that is, the bird, the poet answers, No Kahiki mai, from Kahiki, from some distant region, the gift of heaven, it may be, as implied in the next line, Hiki mai ka Lani. The coming of the king, or chief, Lani, literally, the heaven-born, with the consummation of the love. Exactly what this connection is no one can say.
Footnote 416: (return) In the expression Pili me ka’u manu the poet returns to his figure of a bird as representing a loved one.
Footnote 417: (return) O ka hua o ke kolea, aia i Kahiki. In declaring that the egg of the kolea is laid in a foreign land, Kahiki, the poet enigmatizes, basing his thought on some fancied resemblance between the mystery of love and the mystery of the kolea’s birth.
A plover at the full of the sea—
What, pray, is it saying to me?
It keeps bobbing its noddy.
To do what would you counsel?
5Why, eat its plump body!
Whence comes the sweet morsel?
From the land of Kahiki.
When our sovereign appears,
Hawaii gathers for play,
10Stumble-blocks cleared from the way—
Fit rule of the king’s highway.
Let each one embrace then his love;
For me, I’ll keep to my dove.
Hark now, the signal for bed!
15Attentive then to love’s tread,
While a wee bird sings in the soul,
My love comes to me heart-whole—
Then quaff the waters of bliss.
Say what is the key to all this?
20The plover egg’s laid in Kahiki.
Your love, when it comes, finds me dumb.
The plover—kolea—is a wayfarer in Hawaii; its nest-home is in distant lands, Kahiki. The Hawaiian poet finds in all this something that reminds him of the spirit of love.