Fornander says that, when he first heard the legend of the two brother prophets delivering the Menehune people, “he was inclined to doubt its genuineness and to consider it as a paraphrase or adaptation of the Biblical account by some semi-civilized or semi-Christianized Hawaiian, after the discovery of the group by Captain Cook. But a larger and better acquaintance with Hawaiian folk-lore has shown that though the details of the legend, as interpreted by the Christian Hawaiian from whom it was received, may possibly in some degree, and unconsciously to him, perhaps, have received a Biblical coloring, yet the main facts of the legend, with the identical names of persons and places, are referred to more or less distinctly in other legends of undoubted antiquity.” And the Rev. Mr. Dibble, in his history, says of these Hawaiian legends, that “they were told to the missionaries before the Bible was translated into the Hawaiian tongue, and before the people knew much of sacred history. The native who acted as assistant in translating the history of Joseph was forcibly struck with its similarity to their ancient tradition. Neither is there the least room for supposing that the songs referred to are recent inventions. They can all be traced back for generations, and are known by various persons residing on different islands who have had no communication with each other. Some of them have their date in the reign of some ancient king, and others have existed time out of mind. It may also be added, that both their narrations and songs are known the best by the very oldest of the people, and those who never learned to read; whose education and training were under the ancient system of heathenism.”
“Two hypotheses,” says Judge Fornander, “may with some plausibility be suggested to account for this remarkable resemblance of folk-lore. One is, that during the time of the Spanish galleon trade, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, between the Spanish Main and Manila, some shipwrecked people, Spaniards and Portuguese, had obtained sufficient influence to introduce these scraps of Bible history into the legendary lore of this people.... On this fact hypothesis I remark that, if the shipwrecked foreigners were educated men, or only possessed of such Scriptural knowledge as was then imparted to the commonality of laymen, it is morally impossible to conceive that a Spaniard of the sixteenth century should confine his instruction to some of the leading events of the Old Testament, and be totally silent upon the Christian dispensation, and the cruciolatry, mariolatry, and hagiolatry of that day. And it is equally impossible to conceive that the Hawaiian listeners, chiefs, priests, or commoners, should have retained and incorporated so much of the former in their own folk-lore, and yet have utterly forgotten every item bearing upon the latter.
“The other hypothesis is, that at some remote period either a body of the scattered Israelites had arrived at these islands direct, or in Malaysia, before the exodus of ‘the Polynesian family,’ and thus imparted a knowledge of their doctrines, of the early life of their ancestors, and of some of their peculiar customs, and that having been absorbed by the people among whom they found a refuge, this is all that remains to attest their presence—intellectual tombstones over a lost and forgotten race, yet sufficient after twenty-six centuries of silence to solve in some measure the ethnic puzzle of the lost tribes of Israel. In regard to this second hypothesis, it is certainly more plausible and cannot be so curtly disposed of as the Spanish theory.... So far from being copied one from the other, they are in fact independent and original versions of a once common legend, or series of legends, held alike by Cushite, Semite, Turanian, and Aryan, up to a certain time, when the divergencies of national life and other causes brought other subjects peculiar to each other prominently in the foreground; and that as these divergencies hardened into system and creed, that grand old heirloom of a common past became overlaid and colored by the peculiar social and religious atmosphere through which it has passed up to the surface of the present time. But besides this general reason for refusing to adopt the Israelitish theory, that the Polynesian legends were introduced by fugitive or emigrant Hebrews from the subverted kingdoms of Israel or Judah, there is the more special reason to be added that the organization and splendor of Solomon’s empire, his temple, and his wisdom became proverbial among the nations of the East subsequent to his time; on all these, the Polynesian legends are absolutely silent.”
In commenting on the legend of Hiiaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele, Judge Fornander says: “If the Hebrew legend of Joshua or a Cushite version give rise to it, it only brings down the community of legends a little later in time. And so would the legend of Naulu-a-Mahea,… unless the legend of Jonah, with which it corresponds in a measure, as well as the previous legend of Joshua and the sun, were Hebrew anachronisms compiled and adapted in later times from long antecedent materials, of which the Polynesian references are but broken and distorted echoes, bits of legendary mosaics, displaced from their original surroundings and made to fit with later associations.”
In regard to the account of the Creation, he remarks that “the Hebrew legend infers that the god Elohim existed contemporaneously with and apart from the chaos. The Hawaiian legend makes the three great gods, Kane, Ku, and Lono, evolve themselves out of chaos.... The order of creation, according to Hawaiian folk-lore, was that after Heaven and earth had been separated, and the ocean had been stocked with its animals, the stars were created, then the moon, then the sun.” Alluding to the fact that the account in Genesis is truer to nature, Judge Fornander nevertheless propounds the inquiry whether this fact may not “indicate that the Hebrew text is a later emendation of an older but once common tradition”?
Highest antiquity is claimed for Hawaiian traditions in regard to events subsequent to the creation of man. “In one of the sacrificial hymns of the Marquesans, when human victims were offered, frequent allusions were made to ‘the red apples eaten in Naoau,’ … and to the ‘tabooed apples of Atea,’ as the cause of death, wars, pestilence, famine, and other calamities, only to be averted or atoned for by the sacrifice of human victims. The close connection between the Hawaiian and the Marquesan legends indicates a common origin, and that origin can be no other than that from which the Chaldean and Hebrew legends of sacred trees, disobedience, and fall also sprang.” In comparison of “the Hawaiian myth of Kanaloa as a fallen angel antagonistic to the great gods, as the spirit of evil and death in the world, the Hebrew legends are more vague and indefinite as to the existence of an evil principle. The serpent of Genesis, the Satan of Job, the Hillel of Isaiah, the dragon of the Apocalypse—all point, however, to the same underlying idea that the first cause of sin, death, evil, and calamities, was to be found in disobedience and revolt from God. They appear as disconnected scenes of a once grand drama that in olden times riveted the attention of mankind, and of which, strange to say, the clearest synopsis and the most coherent recollection are, so far, to be found in Polynesian traditions. It is probably in vain to inquire with whom the legend of an evil spirit and his operations in Heaven and on earth had its origin. Notwithstanding the apparent unity of design and remarkable coincidence in many points, yet the differences in coloring, detail, and presentation are too great to suppose the legend borrowed by one from either of the others. It probably descended to the Chaldeans, Polynesians, and Hebrews alike, from a source or people anterior to themselves, of whom history now is silent.”
II
Exploits of Maui
I.—Snaring the Sun
Maui was the son of Hina-lau-ae and Hina, and they dwelt at a place called Makalia, above Kahakuloa, on West Maui. Now, his mother Hina made kapas. And as she spread them out to dry, the days were so short that she was put to great trouble and labor in hanging them out and taking them in day after day until they were dry. Maui, seeing this, was filled with pity for her, for the days were so short that, no sooner had she got her kapas all spread out to dry, than the Sun went down, and she had to take them in again. So he determined to make the Sun go slower. He first went to Wailohi, in Hamakua, on East Maui, to observe the motions of the Sun. There he saw that it rose toward Hana. He then went up on Haleakala, and saw that the Sun in its course came directly over that mountain. He then went home again, and after a few days went to a place called Paeloko, at Waihee. There he cut down all the cocoanut-trees, and gathered the fibre of the cocoanut husks in great quantity. This he manufactured into strong cord. One Moemoe, seeing this, said tauntingly to him: “Thou wilt never catch the Sun. Thou art an idle nobody.”
Maui answered: “When I conquer my enemy, and my desire is attained, I will be your death.” So he went up Haleakala again, taking his cord with him. And when