Such recitative and, as it were, symbolic use of genealogical chants occurs over and over again.  That the series is often of emotional rather than of historical value is suggested by the wordplays and by the fact that the hero tales do not show what is so characteristic of Icelandic saga—­a care to record the ancestry of each character as it is introduced into the story.  To be sure, they commonly begin with the names of the father and mother of the hero, and their setting; but in the older mythological tales these are almost invariably Ku and Hina, a convention almost equivalent to the phrase “In the olden time”; but, besides fixing the divine ancestry of the hero, carrying also with it an idea of kinship with those to whom the tale is related, which is not without its emotional value.

Geographical names, although not enumerated to such an extent in any of the tales and songs now accessible, also have an important place in Hawaiian composition.  In the Laieikawai 76 places are mentioned by name, most of them for the mere purpose of identifying a route of travel.  A popular form of folk tale is the following, told in Waianae, Oahu:  “Over in Kahuku lived a high chief, Kaho’alii.  He instructed his son ’Fly about Oahu while I chew the awa; before I have emptied it into the cup return to me and rehearse to me all that you have seen.’” The rest of the tale relates the youth’s enumeration of the places he has seen on the way.

If we turn to the chants the suggestive use of place names becomes still more apparent.  Dr. Hyde tells us (Hawaiian Annual, 1890, p. 79):  “In the Hawaiian chant (mele) and dirge (kanikau) the aim seems to be chiefly to enumerate every place associated with the subject, and to give that place some special epithet, either attached to it by commonplace repetition or especially devised for the occasion as being particularly characteristic.”  An example of this form of reference is to be found in the Kualii chant.  We read: 

  Where is the battle-field
  Where the warrior is to fight? 
  On the field of Kalena,
  At Manini, at Hanini,
  Where was poured the water of the god,
  By your work at Malamanui,
  At the heights of Kapapa, at Paupauwela,
  Where they lean and rest.

In the play upon the words Manini and Hanini we recognize some rhetorical tinkering, but in general the purpose here is to enumerate the actual places famous in Kualii’s history.

At other times a place-name is used with allusive interest, the suggested incident being meant, like certain stories alluded to in the Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf,” to set off, by comparison or contrast, the present situation.  It is important for the poet to know, for example, that the phrase “flowers of Paiahaa” refers to the place on Kau, Hawaii, where love-tokens cast into the sea at a point some 20 or 30 miles distant on the Puna coast, invariably find their way to shore in the current and bring their message to watchful lovers.