The legends of a people are of interest to the scholar, the thinker,
and the poet.
The legends tell us of the struggles, the triumphs, and the wanderings
of the people, of their thoughts, their aspirations; in short, they
give us a twilight history of the race.
As the geologist finds in the rocks the dim records of the beginnings
of life on our planet, the first foreshadowings of the mighty forests
that have since covered the lands, and of the countless forms of animal
life that have at last culminated in Man, so does the historian
discover in the legends of a people the dim traces of its origin and
development till it comes out in the stronger light of the later day.
So it is with the legends of the Hawaiians, or of the Polynesian race.
We see them, very indistinctly, starting from some distant home in
Asia, finally reaching the Pacific Ocean, and then gradually spreading
abroad over its islands till they dominate a large portion of its
extent.
In bringing together this collection of Hawaiian legends, the author of
this little book has conferred a great favor upon all those residents
of Hawaii and of those visitors to its shores who may take an interest
in its original inhabitants, once an exceedingly numerous people, but
now a scattering remnant only. To that native race this little book
will be at once a joy and a sorrow; to the heart of the haole, who has
lived among them, known them intimately for thirty years or more (as
has the writer of this Foreword), and learned to love them, this
collection of the legends of old Honolulu brings a warm “Aloha!”
Geo. H. Barton,
Director, Teachers’ School of Science, Boston, Mass.
Formerly Professor of Geology at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
June 4, 1915.