Hawaiian Hale aloha

Marquesan HA’E kaoha

The elision of medial consonants, so marked in these Marquesan instances, is no less common both in Gaelic and the Lowland Scots.  Stranger still, that prevalent Polynesian sound, the so-called catch, written with an apostrophe, and often or always the gravestone of a perished consonant, is to be heard in Scotland to this day.  When a Scot pronounces water, better, or bottle—­wa’er, be’er, or bo’le—­the sound is precisely that of the catch; and I think we may go beyond, and say, that if such a population could be isolated, and this mispronunciation should become the rule, it might prove the first stage of transition from t to k, which is the disease of Polynesian languages.  The tendency of the Marquesans, however, is to urge against consonants, or at least on the very common letter l, a war of mere extermination.  A hiatus is agreeable to any Polynesian ear; the ear even of the stranger soon grows used to these barbaric voids; but only in the Marquesan will you find such names as Haaii and Paaaeua, when each individual vowel must be separately uttered.

These points of similarity between a South Sea people and some of my own folk at home ran much in my head in the islands; and not only inclined me to view my fresh acquaintances with favour, but continually modified my judgment.  A polite Englishman comes to-day to the Marquesans and is amazed to find the men tattooed; polite Italians came not long ago to England and found our fathers stained with woad; and when I paid the return visit as a little boy, I was highly diverted with the backwardness of Italy:  so insecure, so much a matter of the day and hour, is the pre-eminence of race.  It was so that I hit upon a means of communication which I recommend to travellers.  When I desired any detail of savage custom, or of superstitious belief, I cast back in the story of my fathers, and fished for what I wanted with some trait of equal barbarism:  Michael Scott, Lord Derwentwater’s head, the second-sight, the Water Kelpie,—­each of these I have found to be a killing bait; the black bull’s head of Stirling procured me the legend of Rahero; and what I knew of the Cluny Macphersons, or the Appin Stewarts, enabled me to learn, and helped me to understand, about the Tevas of Tahiti.  The native was no longer ashamed, his sense of kinship grew warmer, and his lips were opened.  It is this sense of kinship that the traveller must rouse and share; or he had better content himself with travels from the blue bed to the brown.  And the presence of one Cockney titterer will cause a whole party to walk in clouds of darkness.