Ref.—­Perhaps resting at peace,
  To the melodious voice of the birds.

  Laieikawai rests here
  On the wings of the birds;
  Beautiful, beautiful,
  The storied one of the uplands.

  She has heard perhaps the playing
  Of Malio’s ti-leaf trumpet;
  Playfully, playfully,
  The storied one of Hopoe.]

[Footnote 4:  Dr. N. B. Emerson’s rendering of the myth of Pele and Hiiaka quotes only the poetical portions.  Her Majesty Queen Liluokalani interested herself in providing a translation of the Laieikawai, and the Hon. Sanford B. Dole secured a partial translation of the story; but neither of these copies has reached the publisher’s hands.]

[Footnote 5:  The most important of these chants translated from the Hawaiian are the “Song of Creation,” prepared by Liliuokalani; the “Song of Kualii,” translated by both Lyons and Wise, and the prophetic song beginning "Haui ka lani," translated by Andrews and edited by Dole.  To these should be added the important songs cited by Fornander, in full or in part, which relate the origin of the group, and perhaps the name song beginning “The fish ponds of Mana,” quoted in Fornander’s tale of Lonoikamakahiki, the canoe-chant in Kana, and the wind chants in Pakaa.]

II.  NATURE AND THE GODS AS REFLECTED IN THE STORY

1.  POLYNESIAN ORIGIN OF HAWAIIAN ROMANCE

Truly to interpret Hawaiian romance we must realize at the start its relation to the past of that people, to their origin and migrations, their social inheritance, and the kind of physical world to which their experience has been confined.  Now, the real body of Hawaiian folklore belongs to no isolated group, but to the whole Polynesian area.  From New Zealand through the Tongan, Ellice, Samoan, Society, Rarotongan, Marquesan, and Hawaiian groups, fringing upon the Fijian and the Micronesian, the same physical characteristics, the same language, customs, habits of life prevail; the same arts, the same form of worship, the same gods.  And a common stock of tradition has passed from mouth to mouth over the same area.  In New Zealand, as in Hawaii, men tell the story of Maui’s fishing and the theft of fire.[1] A close comparative study of the tales from each group should reveal local characteristics, but for our purpose the Polynesian race is one, and its common stock of tradition, which at the dispersal and during the subsequent periods of migration was carried as common treasure-trove of the imagination as far as New Zealand on the south and Hawaii on the north, and from the western Fiji to the Marquesas on the east, repeats the same adventures among similar surroundings and colored by the same interests and desires.  This means, in the first place, that the race must have developed for a long period of time in some common home of origin before the dispersal