I started my research at freebookapalooza in the Pacific tab that had many different Hawaiian Mythology books for me to read. I didn't know where to start so I picked the first link to start researching.
It lead me to a book The Legends of old Hawaii as told by Tutu and her grandchildren. After reading through I learned many new stories about the culture's mythology.
The first story was about The Song of Taro. There was an old man who lived with his son. The son was very lazy and never helped the father no matter how much he pleaded. The villagers praised the son for his beautiful singing voice, the more praise the less the son did to help. One day a kahuna came to their home while the father was out tending to the taro fields. The kahuna asked the son for some food and water and the son told him that there were fish in the sea and taro in the fields. The son told him he wanted to stay in the shade and sing. The kahuna became angry with the son and spoke over him, saying that he would sing day and night and his voice would sound like a hollow drum beat. The son became frightened and called out to his father, only for his voice to sound like a hollow drum. The son looked down and saw his body was green like a frog. He hurried to the taro patch to see his father but the father did not recognize him. The son lived the rest of his days a frog, and in the taro patch.
The next story was about the Shark Man of Waipio. There was a beautiful young woman who was swimming in the ocean with her friends one day. The Shark god saw her and fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. He transformed himself into his human form which was a handsome man. The village threw a luau in his honor, because he looked like a great warrior from another tribe. The Shark god won all of the contests and then asked the young woman to marry him. She agreed and they lived by a waterfall with a pond at the bottom of it. He would dive into the water for so long that the woman worried he would never come back up. He reassured her that he would always come back up, and that he was preparing a home for their son. The Shark god told her that he would have to return to his people, but once their son was born she would have to keep a cloak on his back no matter what. Once the son was born, she realized why he had said this. The son had a shark mouth on his back, and this is when she knew that the man was the Shark god. As the son grew he swam in the pool and would stay under for as much time as his father did. The children of the village would tell the son when they would go swimming in the ocean. Soon after a shark would come and take one of the children. It was the son playing tricks on the children, but the village wanted to cleanse their people of the evil and created a test for the men and children. During the son's walk on the leaves test he slipped and a man caught him by his cloak. The cloak fell to reveal his shark mouth and the village ran to attack him. The son ran back to the pond and the people threw rocks and sticks till it almost filled up the pond. But the son had safely returned to the ocean with his father, because the father dug a tunnel to the sea knowing this would happen.
The last story I will talk about for now is called the Sleeping Giant. There once was a very successful fisherman who always caught huge fish. One day he caught one of the biggest he had ever seen. Once the fish was in the boat, it began to cry. Seeing this the fisherman knew that the fish was a Akua. He brought it to the village to his wife. When they were there the whole village heard the fish crying and brought it food to try to please it. The only time it would not cry was when it was eating. After the fish had eaten all the poi in the village it transformed into a giant man that fell asleep. As time progressed the villagers kept feeding the giant food to please it, but the giant kept growing bigger and bigger and eating all the village food. The villagers went to the other side of the island where a Kahuna-nui lived and asked him to help them. He came to the village and saw the giant, he asked them then if they had tried singing to it. He told them that he would be appeased only by one song and the troubled times would end. So then while the villagers fed the giant, they would sing all the songs they knew. One little girl had the sweetest voice, and while singing she looked at the rocks near the foot of the mountain. She began to sing a new song about how a giant turned into stone, and while she sang the giant began to transform into stone. The legend says that the giant is still at the foot of Kapaa.
All stories taken from the Legends of old Hawaii as told by Tutu and her grandchildren by Betty Allen.
(Caption: Shark in the ocean by Flickr)
Comments
Post a Comment