Post by Okwes on Jun 2, 2008 11:32:43 GMT -5
Legend Of The Makahiki - Hawaiian
Lono sends out two of his brothers as messengers to find him a wife on earth. They travel from island to island and finally in the Waipio valley on Hawaii beside the falls of Hi'ilawe they find the beautiful Ka-iki-lani dwelling in a breadfruit grove companioned by birds. Lono descends on a rainbow and makes her his wife and she becomes a goddess under the name of Ka-iki-Tani-ali'i-o-Puna. They live at Ke-ala-ke-akua and delight in the sport of surfing. A chief of earth makes love to her and Lono hears him singing a wooing song. He is angry and beats her to death, but not before she has assured him of her innocence and her love for him. Lono then institutes the Makahiki games in her honor and travels about the island like a madman challenging every man he meets to a wrestling match. He builds a canoe such as mortal eyes have never seen since, with a mast of ohia wood and a sail woven of Ni'ihau matting and cordage twisted from the coconuts of Keauhou. The people bring heaps of provisions and pile them up before him. Forty men bear the canoe to the launching place, but Lono sails forth alone. His words of promise to the people are that he will return to them, not by canoe but on an island shaded by trees, covered over by coconuts, swarming with fowl and swine. 15
The story opens much like the version given by Ellis of the institution of the Arioi society by the god Oro, in the person of Oro-tetefa as Mühlmann thinks, whom he takes to be the earthly Oro and perhaps a historical person. 16"
Hawaiian Mythology, by Martha Beckwith, Yale University Press [1940, copyright not renewed] and is now in the public domain.
Lono sends out two of his brothers as messengers to find him a wife on earth. They travel from island to island and finally in the Waipio valley on Hawaii beside the falls of Hi'ilawe they find the beautiful Ka-iki-lani dwelling in a breadfruit grove companioned by birds. Lono descends on a rainbow and makes her his wife and she becomes a goddess under the name of Ka-iki-Tani-ali'i-o-Puna. They live at Ke-ala-ke-akua and delight in the sport of surfing. A chief of earth makes love to her and Lono hears him singing a wooing song. He is angry and beats her to death, but not before she has assured him of her innocence and her love for him. Lono then institutes the Makahiki games in her honor and travels about the island like a madman challenging every man he meets to a wrestling match. He builds a canoe such as mortal eyes have never seen since, with a mast of ohia wood and a sail woven of Ni'ihau matting and cordage twisted from the coconuts of Keauhou. The people bring heaps of provisions and pile them up before him. Forty men bear the canoe to the launching place, but Lono sails forth alone. His words of promise to the people are that he will return to them, not by canoe but on an island shaded by trees, covered over by coconuts, swarming with fowl and swine. 15
The story opens much like the version given by Ellis of the institution of the Arioi society by the god Oro, in the person of Oro-tetefa as Mühlmann thinks, whom he takes to be the earthly Oro and perhaps a historical person. 16"
Hawaiian Mythology, by Martha Beckwith, Yale University Press [1940, copyright not renewed] and is now in the public domain.