Read Ebook: Here and Now Story Book Two- to seven-year-olds by Mitchell Lucy Sprague Van Loon Hendrik Willem Illustrator

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Ebook has 948 lines and 63963 words, and 19 pages

"Return to Kahiki, lest you yourself be destroyed," was the advice of Kane-milo-hai.

Pele, accepting the gage thrown down by Na-maka-o-ka-ha'i, with the reluctant consent of her guardian Ka-moho-alii, went into battle single-handed. The contest was terrific. The sea-monster, aided by her dragon consort, was seemingly victorious. Dismembered parts of Pele's body were cast up at Kahiki-nui, where they are still pointed out as the bones of Pele . Ka-moho-alii was dismayed thinking Pele to have been destroyed;--but, looking across the Ale-nui-haha channel, he saw the spirit-form of Pele flaming in the heavens above the summits of Mauna-loa and Mauna-kea. As for Na-maka-o-ka-ha'i, she retired from the battle exultant, thinking that her enemy Pele was done for: but when she reported her victory to Kane-milo-hai, that friend of Pele pointed to the spirit body of Pele glowing in the heavens as proof that she was mistaken. Namaka was enraged at the sight and would have turned back to renew the conflict, but Kane-milo-hai dissuaded her from this foolhardy undertaking, saying, "She is invincible; she has become a spirit."

The search for a home-site still went on. Even Hale-a-ka-la was not found to be acceptable to Pele's fastidious taste. According to one account it proved to be so large that Pele found herself unable to keep it warm. Pele, a goddess now, accordingly bade adieu to Maui and its clustering isles and moved on to Hawaii.

HE KAAO NA PELE, I HAALELE AI IA MAUI

Aloha o Maui, aloha, e! Aloha o Moloka'i, aloha, e! Aloha o Lana'i, aloha, e! Aloha o Kaho'olawe, aloha, e! Ku makou e hele, e! O Hawaii ka ka aina A makou e noho ai a mau loa aku; Ke ala ho'i a makou i hiki mai ai, He ala paoa ole ko Ka-moho-alii, Ko Pele, ko Kane-milo-hai, ko Kane-apua, Ko Hiiaka--ka no'iau--i ka poli o Pele, I hiki mai ai.

TRANSLATION

PELE'S FAREWELL TO MAUI

Farewell to thee, Maui, farewell! Farewell to thee, Moloka'i, farewell! Farewell to thee, Lana'i, farewell! Farewell to thee, Kaho'olawe, farewell! We stand all girded for travel: Hawaii, it seems, is the land On which we shall dwell evermore. The route by which we came hither Touched lands not the choice of Paoa;-- 'Twas the route of Ka-moho-alii, Of Pele and Kane-milo-hai, Route traveled by Kane-apua, and by Hiiaka, the wise, the darling of Pele.

Pele and her company landed on Hawaii at Pua-k?, a desolate spot between Kawaihae and Kailua. Thence they journeyed inland until they came to a place which they named Moku-aweo-weo--not the site of the present crater of that name, but--situated where yawns the vast caldera of Kilauea. It was at the suggestion of Ku-moku-halii and Keawe-nui-kau of Hilo that the name was conferred. They also gave the name Mauna-loa to the mountain mass that faced them on the west, "because," said they, "our journey was long."

Night fell and they slept. In the morning, when the elepaio uttered its note, they rose and used the Paoa staff. The omens were favorable, and Pele decided that this was the place for her to establish a permanent home.

The people immediately began to set out many plants valuable for food; among them a variety of kalo called awe?, well suited for upland growth; the ulu ; the mai? ; the pala-? ; the awa and other useful plants.

The land on the Hilo side of Kilauea, being in the rain belt, is fertile and well fitted for tillage. The statement, however, that Kilauea, or its vicinity, became the place of settlement for any considerable number of people cannot be taken literally. The climatic conditions about Kilauea are too harsh and untropical to allow either the people or the food plants of Polynesia to feel at home in it. The probability is that instead of being gathered about Kilauea, they made their homes in the fat lands of lower Puna or Hilo.

Pele, on her human side at least, was dependent for support and physical comfort upon the fruits of the earth and the climatic conditions that made up her environment. Yet with all this, in the narrative that follows her relations to humanity are of that exceptional character that straddle, as it were, that border line which separates the human from the superhuman, but for the most part occupy the region to the other side of that line, the region into which if men and women of this work-a-day world pass they find themselves uncertain whether the beings with whom they converse are bodied like themselves or made up of some insubstantial essence and liable to dissolve and vanish at the touch.

PELE IN THE BOSOM OF HER FAMILY

Once, when Pele was living in the pit of Kilauea, she roused up from her couch on the rough hearth-plate and said to her sisters, "Let us make an excursion to the ocean and enjoy ourselves, open the opihi shells and sea-urchins, hunt for small squid and gather sea-moss."

To this all joyfully assented, saying, "Yes, let us go."

The sisters formed quite a procession as they tramped the narrow downhill path until they came to the hill Pu'u-Pahoehoe--a place in the lower lands of Puna. Pele herself did not visibly accompany them on this journey; that was not according to her custom: she had other ways and means of travel than to plod along a dusty road. When, however, the party arrived at the rendezvous, there, sure enough, they found Pele awaiting them, ready for the business in hand.

In the midst of their pleasurings Pele caught sight of Hopoe and Haena as they were indulging in an al fresco dance and having a good time by the Puna sea. She was greatly pleased and, turning to her sisters, said, "Come, haven't you also got some dance that you can show off in return for this entertainment by Hopoe and her companion?"

They all hung their heads and said, "We have no hula."

Hiiaka, the youngest, had stayed behind to gather lehua flowers, and when she came along laden with wreaths, Pele said to her, jestingly, "I've just been proposing to your sisters here to dance a hula in response to that of Hopoe and her fellow, but they decline, saying they have not the art. I suppose it's of no use to ask you, you are so small; but, perhaps, you've got a bit of a song."

"Yes, I have a song," Hiiaka answered, to the surprise of all.

"Let us have it, then; go on!" said Pele.

Then the little girl, having first decorated all of her sisters with the wreaths, beginning with Pele, sang as follows:

Ke ha'a la Puna i ka makani; Ha'a ka ulu hala i Keaau; Ha'a Haena me Hopoe; Ha'a ka wahine, Ami i kai o Nana-huki, la-- Hula le'a wale, I kai o Nana-huki, e-e!

TRANSLATION

Puna's a-dance in the breeze, The hala groves of Keaau shaken: Haena and Hopoe are swaying; The thighs of the dancing nymph Quiver and sway, down at Nana-huki-- A dance most sightly and pleasing, Down by the sea Nana-huki.

Pele was delighted. "Is that all you have?" she asked.

"I have something more," said the girl.

"Let us hear it then."

Hiiaka put even more spirit into the song as she complied:

O Puna kai kuw? i ka hala; Pae ka leo o ke kai; Ke lu, la, i na pua lehua. Nana i kai o Hopoe, Ka wahine ami i kai O Nana-huki, la; Hula le'a wale, I kai o Nana-huki, e-e.

TRANSLATION

The voice of Puna's sea resounds Through the echoing hala groves; The lehua trees cast their bloom. Look at the dancing girl Hopoe; Her graceful hips swing to and fro, A-dance on the beach Nana-huki: A dance that is full of delight, Down by the sea Nana-huki.

At the conclusion of this innocent performance--the earliest mention of the hula that has reached us--Hiiaka went to stay with her friend Hopoe, a person whose charm of character had fascinated the imagination of the susceptible girl and who had already become her dearest intimate, her inspiring mentor in those sister arts, song, poesy and the dance.

Pele herself remained with her sister Hiiaka-i-ka-pua-enaena , and presently she lay down to sleep in a cave on a smooth plate of pahoehoe. Before she slept she gave her sister this command: "Listen to me. I am lying down to sleep; when the others return from fishing, eat of the fish, but don't dare to wake me. Let me sleep on until I wake of myself. If one of you wakes me it will be the death of you all. If you must needs wake me, however, call my little sister and let her be the one to rouse me; or, if not her, let it be my brother Ke-o-wahi-maka-o-ka-ua--one of these two."

When Ke-o-wahi-maka-o-ka-ua, who was so closely related to Pele that she called him brother, had received this command and had seen her lapse into profound sleep he went and reported the matter to Hiiaka, retailing all that Pele had said. "Strange that this havoc-producer should sleep in this way, and no bed-fellow!" said Hiiaka to herself. "Here are all the other Hiiakas, all of equal rank and merit! Perhaps it was because my dancing pleased her that she wishes me to be the one to rouse her."

The cavern in the hill Pahoehoe in which Pele lay and slept, wrapped in her robe , remains to this day.

In her sleep Pele heard the far-off beating of hula drums, and her spirit-body pursued the sound. At first it seemed to come from some point far out to sea; but as she followed, it shifted, moving to the north, till it seemed to be off the beach of Waiakea, in Hilo; thence it moved till it was opposite Lau-pahoehoe. Still evading her pursuit, the sound retreated till it came from the boisterous ocean that beats against the shaggy cliffs of Hamakua. Still going north, it seemed presently to have reached the mid channel of Ale-nui-haha that tosses between Hawaii and Maui.

"If you are from my far-off home-land Kahiki, I will follow you thither, but I will come up with you," said Pele.

To her detective ear, as she flitted across the heaving waters of Ale-nui-haha, the pulsing of the drums now located itself at the famous hill Kauwiki, in Hana; but, on reaching that place, the music had passed on to the west and sounded from the cliffs of Ka-haku-loa.

The fugitive music led her next across another channel, until in her flight she had traversed the length of Moloka'i and had come to the western point of that island, Lae-o-ka-laau. Thence she flew to cape Maka-pu'u, on Oahu, and so on, until, after crossing that island, she reached cape Kaena, whose finger-point reaches out towards Kaua'i. In that desolate spot dwelt an aged creature of myth, Pohaku-o-Kaua'i by name, the personal representative of that rock whose body-form the hero Mawi had jerked from its ocean bed ages before, in his futile attempt to draw together the two islands Kaua'i and Oahu and unite them into one mass.

Pele, arguing from her exasperation, said, "It must be my old grandfather Pohaku-o-Kaua'i who is playing this trick with the music. If it's he that's leading me this chase, I'll kill him."

The old fellow saw her approach and, hailing her from a distance, greeted her most heartily. Her answer was in a surly mood: "Come here! I'm going to kill you to-day. So it's you that's been fooling me with deceitful music, leading me a wearisome chase."

"Not I, I've not done this. There they are, out to sea; you can hear for yourself." And, sure enough, on listening, one could hear the throbbing of the music in the offing.

Pele acknowledged her mistake and continued her pursuit, with the parting assurance to the old soul that if he had been the guilty one, it would have been his last day of life.

The real authors of this illusive musical performance were two little creatures named Kani-ka-w? and Kani-ka-w?, the former a sprite that was embodied in the nose-flute, the latter in the hokeo, a kind of whistle, both of them used as accompaniments to the hula. Their sly purpose was to lure Pele to a place where the hula was being performed.

Pele now plunged into the watgs he notices and these are the things he interprets in his play activities. Transportation and animals and himself. Do not these pretty well cover the field of his interests? If conceived of as motor and personal do they not hold all the material a four-or five-year-old needs for stories? If we bring in inanimate unmoving things, we must do with them what he does. We must endow them with life and motion. We need not be afraid of personification. This is the age when anthropomorphism flourishes. The five-year-old is still motor; his conception of cause is still personal. He thinks through his muscles; he personifies in his thought and his play.

Nevertheless there is very real danger in anthropomorphism,--in thus leaving the world of reality. There is danger of confusing the child. We must be sure our personifications are built on relationships which our child can understand and which have an objective validity. We must be sure that a wolf remains a wolf and an engine an engine, though endowed with human speech.

Now, what are the typical relationships which a four-or five-year-old uses to bind together his world into intelligible experiences? We have already noted the personal relationship which persists in modified form. But does not the grouping of things because of physical juxtaposition now give way to a conception of "Use"? Does he not think of the world largely in terms of active functioning? Has not the typical question of this age become "What's it for?" Even his early definitions are in terms of use which has a strong motor implication. "A table is to eat off"; "a spoon is to eat in"; "a river means where you get drinks out of water, and catch fish, and throw stones." It was only consistent with his general conception of relationships in the world to have a little boy of my acquaintance examine a very small man sitting beside him in the subway and then turn to his father with the question, "What is that little man for?"

Stories which are offered to small children must be assessed from this two-fold point of view. What relationships are they based on? And in what terms are they told? Fairy stories should not be exempted. We are inclined to accept them uncritically, feeling that they do not cramp a child as does reality. We cling to the idea that children need a fairy world to "cultivate their imaginations." In the folk tales we are intrigued by the past,--by the sense that these embodiments of human experience, having survived the ages, should be exempt from modern analysis. If, however, we do commit the sacrilege of looking at them alongside of our educational principles, I think we find a few precious ones that stand the test. For children under six, however, even these precious few contribute little in content, but much through their matchless form. On the other hand, we find that many of the human experiences which these old tales embody are quite unsuitable for four-and five-year-olds. Cruelty, trickery, economic inequality,--these are experiences which have shaped and shaken adults and alas! still continue to do so. But do we wish to build them into a four-year-old's thinking? Some of these experiences run counter to the trends of thinking we are trying to establish in other ways; some merely confuse them. We seem to identify imagination with gullibility or vague thinking. But surely true imagination is not based on confusion. Imagination is the basis of art. But confused art is a contradiction of terms.

The whole question of myths and sagas together with the function of personification must be taken up with the older children. For the present we are still concerned with four-and five-year-olds. Two sets of stories told by four-and five-year-old children in the school seem to me to show what emphasizing unrealities may do at this age. The first child in each set is thinking disjunctively; the second has his facts organized into definite relationships. Can one think that the second child enjoyed his ordered world less than the first enjoyed his confusion?

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