Maui

“ And may you not awake old Maui yourself, and scratch your sides and say that you had a funny dream in which you dreamed you were a haole?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "Besides, you wouldn't believe me."
"There is much more in dreams than we know," he assured me with great solemnity. "Dreams go deep, all the way down, maybe to before the beginning. May not old Maui have only dreamed he pulled Hawaii up from the bottom of the sea? Then would this Hawaii land be a dream, and you, and I, and the squid there, only parts of Maui's dream? And the lark bird too?" ”

“ Maui was always good to his mother, and he resolved to take this matter in hand and see what he could do about it. So Maui go into his canoe and sailed far out, till he had reached the horizon, and found the place where the Sun came up from beneath the ocean. The moment the Sun rose, Maui seized him, and broke off some of the rays which stood out from his body, as do the sharp spines from the body of the sea-urchin. Blood poured from the wounds thus made, so that the Sun has looked red ever since. ”

“ Then Maui beat his face till his nose bled, and soaked some tow that he found in the canoe with the blood. That was the bait. Maui threw out his hook, and it was not long before he had a bite, with a tug that made the brothers afraid the boat would be upset. So they cried out, "Let go, Maui!" "Maui never lets go of what he holds," was the answer, and it has become a proverb with the Maoris. ”

“ The story of the island of Maui thus begins and—so runs one version—Maui lived in plain fashion on simple fare in a humble grass hut at Kauiki, the famous foothill of Haleakala in the district of Hana. Hawaii at the time was covered by darkness and fog, so Maui pushed the heavens to their present position far above the highest mountains, Haleakala, Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, and Hualalai. Before this feat, man had to stoop and crawl, pressed closely to the ground, for the skies were low, and were held up by the plants whose 17 leaves became flattened by their burden, even as they remain today. ”

“ Thereupon laughed Maui, and spoke: “When Hine-nui-te-po can take my life, then you can tell me how her looks are, ha, ha!” But his father spoke warningly: “Ah, my son, her eyes, which you see flashing yonder, are dark as greenstone; her teeth are sharp as obsidian; her mouth is like the mouth of the Baracuta, and the hair of her head is the sea-weed; her body alone has human form!”
But Maui only laughed, and asked: “Is Hine-nui-te-po as strong as Tama-nui-ki-te-Ra? Is her strength as the strength of the sea, which I have conquered and filled with land? ”

“ Ha, the brothers hold; they hold tight. Oh, see Maui!—Maui springs forward with his sacred weapon—Te Ra cries!—Ah, Maui beats him; look, he bleeds!—ha, again he beats the Sun; again—again—Te Ra cries wildly!—ah, ah—Maui has broken his wing—O Maui, the hero!—Ha, that is a terrible battle! Oh, see the eyes on Maui’s fish-hook flashing light—see the carvings; ha, see the adornment of sacred dog’s-hair—Ah, his weapon is superbly beautiful! ”

“ After a restful two weeks in Hilo, we moved on to Honolulu, stopping en route for a week in one of our favorite spots, Lahaina. Here in Maui is none of the frantic scrambling to be seen on the island of Oahu. In Honolulu new buildings are rapidly cutting off the classical sight of Diamond Head, while automobile fumes compete with the subtle fragrance of mimosa. But on Maui—at least for the moment—there is leisure for rest and contemplation. ”

“ Louis von Tempsky, debonair as of old, and the sonsy Armine, stood peering down in the uncertain light. Without trace of yawn from interrupted sleep, they reached to me the hands of perfect welcome one fails not to clasp in these sweet isles. Never, should I embark and depart a thousand times, can Hawaii’s landings become commonplace. Day or night, they remain the most unspoiled of travel blessings.
If there is one thing lovelier than sea-level on Maui, it is her temperate zone. ”

“ It would be impossible to compress into a paper of reasonable length an account of the whole story of the Polynesian hero and demi-god, Maui, which we find divided up into many branches, without putting it into such a dessicated condition as to make it unfit to be offered as literary pabulum. The mythical legend of Maui belonged to Southern, before it came into the possession of Northern, Polynesia, before it crossed the equator and rooted itself in Hawaiian soil. The chief centres for Maui-legends are New Zealand and the Hervey Islands. ”

“ Somewhere on the coast there is an old battlefield where countless human bones still whiten; and on the rocky coast to the south can be seen in shallow water the ruins of miles of ancient fish ponds equaled nowhere in the group. To the northwest Oahu disturbs the horizon, cloud-capped and shimmering in the blue; while Haleakala bulks ten thousand feet in air on Maui to the east.
This ranch home is buried in flowers, and my unbelief in begonias a dozen feet high underwent rude check. A fairy forest of these surrounds the guest cottage, casting a rosy shadow on window and lanai. ”

“ Maui's brothers knew nothing beyond the average home life of the ordinary Hawaiian, and Maui alone was endowed with the power to work miracles. Nevertheless the student of Polynesian legends learns that Maui is more widely known than almost all the demi-gods of all nations as a discoverer of benefits for his fellows, and these physical rather than spiritual. After many fishing excursions Maui's brothers seemed to have wit enough to understand his tricks, and thenceforth they refused to take him in their canoe when they paddled out to the deep-sea fishing grounds. ”

“ If he listens to the tale of Maui fishing up New Zealand from the bottom of the ocean, of the demigod chieftain who was the discoverer of Hawaii and the patriarch of his people, there will pass before his eyes at the mention of places among the Pacific Islands pictures of a dark-skinned, sea-loving race with a history fully as fascinating as that of his own people. ”

“ Maui alone, the great hero—ah, Maui, my tupuna! (ancestor) .—Oh listen, my wanderer—Maui alone had the courage to go to Mahuika to ask her for one of her fingers! He wandered through the caves of the Lower World, and nearer and nearer he approached Mahuika, his heart full of courage and cunning; but, ha, when his eyes beheld his ancestress, he began to tremble so that he could not speak—ah, friend, Mahuika was beautiful to look upon in her dark cave surrounded by her children, who shone forth out of the darkness. ”

“ Maui has also the famous Wailuku Valley, a picturesque gorge several miles deep, and giving you a very fair example of the broken, verdure-clad, and now lonely valleys of these islands; which are in reality steep, narrow cañons, worn out of the mountains by the erosion of water. ”

“ Maui in his noblest moment gave his all for man, whose frailty brought about the downfall of both. For Maui, too, was doomed to die some day, since his father, like Achilles’ nurse Cynosura, had neglected a part of the proper ceremony to make him immortal. Maui abhorred the fact that man must die, for he regarded death as degrading and an insult to the dignity of man. ”

“ The Maoris of New Zealand say that Maui could at will change himself into a bird and with his feathered friends find a home in leafy shelters. In bird form he visited the gods of the under-world. His capricious soul was sensitive to the touch of all that mysterious life of nature.
With the birds as companions and the winds as his servants Maui must soon have turned his inventive mind to kite making.
The Hawaiian myths are perhaps the only ones of the Pacific Ocean which give to any of the gods the pleasure and excitement of kite flying. ”

“ The legends about Maui, his adventures, his fishing up the earth from the water, his getting fire, his fish-hook, Manaiakalani, are many and mostly coincide with the Hawaiian legends. (See Grey’s “Polynesian Mythology.”) Those legends of Maui were recognized and more or less known through all the Polynesian groups, and hence probably arrived with the first settlers. One of the New Zealand traditions has it that the three Mauis concurred in the creation of man and, subsequently, of woman from him. On Hawaii and on the Society group a similar legend, mutatis mutandis, obtained. ”

“ Maui watched her as she pulled up a tuft of grass and disappeared in the earth, pulling the grass back to its place.
Thus Maui found the path to the under-world. Soon he transformed himself into a pigeon and flew down, through the cave, until he saw a party of people under a sacred tree, like those growing in the ancient first Hawaii. He flew to the tree and threw down berries upon the people. They threw back stones. At last he permitted a stone from his father to strike him, and he fell to the ground. "They ran to catch him, but lo! the pigeon had turned into a man." ”

“ We were bound to the former; towards meridian the breeze again filled the sails, and in a few hours we were at anchor in the Roads of Laihaina, securely sheltered by the high hills of the island.
The general appearance of this group is not unlike clusters of the Grecian Archipelago: the same reddish hues to the heights, the same basking verdure in the valleys, with perhaps a far grander outline and boldness of scenery. In Maui there is no comparison to the universal greenness and fertility of the east side of Hawaii. ”

“ And the dead [33] body was transformed into a long rock, which is there to this day, by the side of the road.
II.—The Origin of Fire
Maui and Hina dwelt together, and to them were born four sons, whose names were Maui-mua, Maui-hope, Maui-kiikii, and Maui-o-ka-lana. These four were fishermen. One morning, just as the edge of the Sun lifted itself up, Maui-mua roused his brethren to go fishing. So they launched their canoe from the beach at Kaupo, on the island of Maui, where they were dwelling, and proceeded to the fishing ground. ”

“ One day, while these great gods were thus engaged preparing a frugal meal, Maui crept up, and by means of a long pole, such perhaps as the ancient bird-catchers were wont to use in snaring birds, reached across the narrow torrent that rushes through rocky Alakahi, and dexterously spearing the roasted fruit, secured them for himself. One of the gods noticed that the bananas were gone and said, "Who is this that has stolen our bananas?" "It is that thievish Maui; he is up to another of his tricks." ”

“ Leaving the high gods whose functions are so large, while their forms (as of lizard, fish and tree) are often so mean, we come to Maui, the great divine hero of the supernatural race in Polynesia. Maui in some respects answers to the chief of the Adityas in Vedic mythology; in others he answers to Qat, Quawteaht, and other savage divine personages. Like the son of the Vedic Aditi, [36] Maui is a rejected and abortive child of his mother, but afterwards attains to the highest reputation. As Qat brought the hitherto unknown night, so Maui settled the sun and moon in their proper courses. ”

“ Maui, too,—the Polynesian god who caught the sun with cords of cocoanut fiber, who lifted the sky and smoothed its arched surface with his stone adze, who made the earth habitable for man and then created him, and who now divides his time between fishing for islands with a hook which is called the Plume of Beauty, and resting in the form of a small day-fly upon the under side of a flower,—Maui, who belongs to the length and breadth of the Pacific, once visited Peru. ”

“ One who knows Hawaii always goes back. The old lure abides; nor does it abate when the vessel’s forefoot, spurning the silver flying-fish, is heard thripping into the azure silken sea-level which betokens nearness to remembered isles. Again “The old lost stars wheel back”; again the yard-arm of the Southern Cross leans upon the night-purple horizon; again, the old, lovely approach to Oahu, with Molokai sleeping to the southeast.
It was the Maui’s first sailing for Honolulu since her war service in the Atlantic. ”

“ Irawaru, the husband of Hinauri, had followed Maui in the morning upon the sea, to catch fish—Irawaru is the reflexion of the sun over the sea, wandering forth with the sun in the mornings to catch fish—what else could a man do on the sea? ”

“ Late in the afternoon of the destined day the hosts of Maui were gathered in the arms of the great mountain. Foremost stood the King. Around his shoulders fell the yellow mamo cloak, and on his head a helmet yellow as his robe save its crest which was red with the feathers of the scarlet bird. Behind him stood the priests in [37] feather cloaks red as the blood of their sacrifices, while in a half circle rose the hundred alii in cloaks mingled with the royal yellow and the priestly red. ”

“ An incomplete list aids in making clear the fact that groups of islands hundreds and even thousands of miles apart have been peopled centuries past by the same organic race. Either complete or fragmentary Maui legends are found in the single islands and island groups of Aneityum, Bowditch or Fakaofa, Efate, Fiji, Fotuna, Gilbert, Hawaii, Hervey, Huahine, Mangaia, Manihiki, Marquesas, Marshall, Nauru, New Hebrides, New Zealand, Samoa, Savage, Tahiti or Society, Tauna, Tokelau and Tonga. ”

“ Before the battle with the sun occurred Maui went down into the underworld, according to the New Zealand tradition, and remained a long time with his relatives. In some way he learned that there was an enchanted jawbone in the possession of some one of his ancestors, so he waited and waited, hoping that at last he might discover it. ”