Now, although Ma-ui had done deeds as great as these, he was not
thought so very much of in his own house. His brothers complained that
when he went fishing with them he caught no fish, or, if he drew one
up, it was a fish that had been taken on a hook belonging to one of
them, and that Ma-ui had managed to get tangled on to his own line. And
yet Ma-ui had invented many things that his brothers made use of. At
first they had spears with smooth heads on them: if they struck a bird,
the bird was often able to flutter away, drawing from the spear-head
that had pierced a wing. And if they struck through a fish, the fish
was often able to wriggle away. Then Ma-ui put barbs upon his spear,
and his spear-head held the birds and the fish. His brothers copied the
spear-head that he made, and after that they were able to kill and
secure more birds and fish than ever before.
He made many things that they copied, and yet his brothers thought him
a lazy and a shiftless fellow, and they made their mother think the
same about him. They were the better fishermen—that was true; indeed,
if there were no one but Ma-ui to go fishing, Hina-of-the-Fire, his
mother, and Hina-of-the-Sea, his sister, would often go hungry.
At last Ma-ui made up his mind to do some wonderful fishing; he might
not be able to catch the fine fish that his brothers desired—the u-lua
and the pi-mo-e—but he would take up something from the bottom of the
sea that would make his brothers forget that he was the lazy and the
shiftless one.
He had to make many plans and go on many adventures before he was ready
for this great fishing. First he had to get a fish-hook that was
different from any fish-hook that had ever been in the world before. In
those days fish-hooks were made out of bones—there was nothing else to
make fish-hooks out of—and Ma-ui would have to get a wonderful bone to
form into a hook. He went down into the underworld to get that bone.
He went to where his ancestress was. On one side she was dead and on
the other side she was a living woman. From the side of her that was
dead Ma-ui took a bone—her jaw-bone—and out of this bone he made his
fish-hook. There was never a fish-hook like it in the world before, and
it was called “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” meaning “Made fast to the heavens.”
He told no one about the wonderful fish-hook he had made for himself.
He had to get a different bait from any bait that had ever been used in
the world before. His mother had sacred birds, the alae, and he asked
her to give him one of them for bait. She gave him one of her birds.
Then Ma-ui, with his bait and his hook hidden, and with a line that he
had made from the strongest olona vines, went down to his brothers’
canoe. “Here is Ma-ui,” they said when they saw him, “here is Ma-ui,
the lazy and the shiftless, and we have sworn that we will never let
him come again with us in our canoe.” They pushed out when they saw him
coming; they paddled away, although he begged them to take him with
them.
He waited on the beach. His brothers came back, and they had to tell
him that they had caught no fish. Then he begged them to go back to sea
again and to let him go this time in their canoe. They let him in, and
they paddled off. “Farther and farther out, my brothers,” said Ma-ui;
“out there is where the u-lua and the pi-mo-e are.” They paddled far
out. They let down their lines, but they caught no fish. “Where are the
u-lua and the pi-mo-e that you spoke of?” said his brothers to him.
Still he told them to go farther and farther out. At last they got
tired with paddling, and they wanted to go back.
Then Ma-ui put a sail upon the canoe. Farther and farther out into the
ocean they went. One of the brothers let down a line, and a great fish
drew on it. They pulled. But what came out of the depths was a shark.
They cut the line and let the shark away. The brothers were very tired
now. “Oh, Ma-ui,” they said, “as ever, thou art lazy and shiftless.
Thou hast brought us out all this way, and thou wilt do nothing to help
us. Thou hast let down no line in all the sea we have crossed.”
It was then that Ma-ui let down his line with the magic hook upon it,
the hook that was baited with the struggling alae bird. Down, down went
the hook that was named “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” “Made fast to the heavens.”
Down through the waters the hook and the bait went. Ka-uni ho-kahi, Old
One Tooth, who holds fast the land to the bottom of the sea, was there.
When the sacred bird came near him he took it in his mouth. And the
magic hook that Ma-ui had made held fast in his jaws.
Ma-ui felt the pull upon the line. He fastened the line to the canoe,
and he bade his brothers paddle their hardest, for now the great fish
was caught. He dipped his own paddle into the sea, and he made the
canoe dash on.
The brothers felt a great weight grow behind the canoe. But still they
paddled on and on. Weighty and more weighty became the catch; harder
and harder it became to pull it along. As they struggled on Ma-ui
chanted a magic chant, and the weight came with them.
“O Island, O great Island,
O Island, O great Island!
Why art thou
Sulkily biting, biting below?
Beneath the earth
The power is felt,
The foam is seen:
Come,
O thou loved grandchild
Of Kanaloa.”
On and on the canoe went, and heavier and heavier grew what was behind
them. At last one of the brothers looked back. At what he saw he
screamed out in affright. For there, rising behind them, a whole land
was rising up, with mountains upon it. The brother dropped his paddle
when he saw what had been fished up; as he dropped his paddle the line
that was fastened to the jaws of old Ka-uni ho-kahi broke.
What Ma-ui fished up would have been a mainland, only that his
brother’s paddle dropped and the line broke. Then only an island came
up out of the water. If more land had come up, all the Islands that we
know would have been joined in one.
There are people who say that his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, was near at
the time of that great fishing. They say she came floating out on a
calabash. When Ma-ui let down the magic hook with their mother’s sacred
bird upon it, Hina-of-the-Sea dived down and put the hook into the
mouth of Old One Tooth, and then pulled at the line to let Ma-ui know
that the hook was in his jaws. Some people say this, and it may be the
truth. But whether or not, every one, on every Island in the Great
Ocean, from Kahiki-mo-e to Hawaii nei, knows that Ma-ui fished up a
great Island for men to live on. And this fishing was the third of
Ma-ui’s great deeds.
HOW MA-UI SNARED THE SUN AND MADE HIM GO MORE SLOWLY ACROSS THE
HEAVENS.
The Sky had been lifted up, and another great Island had come from the
grip of Old One Tooth and was above the waters. The world was better
now for men and women to live in. But still there were miseries in it,
and the greatest of these miseries was on account of the heedlessness
of the Sun.
For the Sun in those days made his way too quickly across the world. He
hurried so that little of his heat got to the plants and the fruits,
and it took years and years for them to ripen. The farmers working on
their patches would not have time in the light of a day to put down
their crop into the ground, so quickly the Sun would rush across the
heavens, and the fishermen would barely have time to launch their
canoes and get to the fishing grounds when the darkness would come on.
And the women’s tasks were never finished. It was theirs to make the
tapa-cloth: a woman would begin at one end of the board to beat the
bark with her four-sided mallet, and she would be only at the middle of
the board by the time the sunset came. When she was ready to go on with
the work next day, the Sun would be already halfway across the heavens.
Ma-ui, when he was a child, used to watch his mother making tapa, and
as he grew up he pitied her more and more because of all the toil and
trouble that she had. She would break the branches from the ma-ma-ka
trees and from the wau-ke trees and soak them in water until their bark
was easily taken off. Then she would take off the outer bark, leaving
the inner bark to be worked upon. She would take the bundles of the wet
inner bark and lay them on the tapa-board and begin pounding them with
little clubs. And then she would use her four-sided mallet and beat all
the soft stuff into little thin sheets. Then she would paste the little
sheets together, making large cloths. This was tapa—the tapa that it
was every woman’s business in those days to make. As soon as morning
reddened the clouds Ma-ui’s mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, would begin her
task: she would begin beating the softened bark at one end of the
board, and she would be only in the middle of the board when the sunset
came. And when she managed to get the tapa made she could never get it
dried in a single day, so quickly the Sun made his way across the
heavens. Ma-ui pitied his mother because of her unceasing toil.
He greatly blamed the Sun for his inconsiderateness of the people of
the world. He took to watching the Sun. He began to know the path by
which the Sun came over the great mountain Ha-le-a-ka-la (but in those
days it was not called Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun, but
A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the Sun). Through a great chasm in the side
of this mountain the Sun used to come.
He told his mother that he was going to do something to make the Sun
have more considerateness for the men and women of the world. “You will
not be able to make him do anything about it,” she said; “the Sun
always went swiftly, and he will always go swiftly.” But Ma-ui said
that he would find a way to make the Sun remember that there were
people in the world and that they were not at all pleased with the way
he was going on.
Then his mother said: “If you are going to force the Sun to go more
slowly you must prepare yourself for a great battle, for the Sun is a
great creature, and he has much energy. Go to your grandmother who
lives on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la,” said she (but it was called
A-hele-a-ka-la then), “and beg her to give you her counsel, and also to
give you a weapon to battle with the Sun.”
So Ma-ui went to his grandmother who lived on the side of the great
mountain. Ma-ui’s grandmother was the one who cooked the bananas that
the Sun ate as he came through the great chasm in the mountain. “You
must go to the place where there is a large wili-wili tree growing,”
said his mother. “There the Sun stops to eat the bananas that your
grandmother cooks for him. Stay until the rooster that watches beside
the wili-wili tree crows three times. Your grandmother will come out
then with a bunch of bananas. When she lays them down, do you take them
up. She will bring another bunch out, and do you take that up too. When
all her bananas are gone she will search for the one who took them.
Then do you show yourself to her. Tell her that you are Ma-ui and that
you belong to Hina-of-the-Fire.”
So Ma-ui went up the side of the mountain that is now called
He-le-a-ka-la, but that then was called A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the
Sun. He came to where a great wili-wili tree was growing. There he
waited. The rooster crew three times, and then an old woman came out
with a bunch of bananas. He knew that this was his grandmother. She
laid the bananas down to cook them, and as she did so Ma-ui snatched
them away. When she went to pick up the bunch she cried out, “Where are
the bananas that I have to cook for my Lord, the Sun?” She went within
and got another bunch, and this one, too, Ma-ui snatched away. This he
did until the last bunch of bananas that his grandmother had was taken.
She was nearly blind, so she could not find him with her eyes. She
sniffed around, and at last she got the smell of a man. “Who are you?”
she said. “I am Ma-ui, and I belong to Hina-of-the-Fire,” said he.
“What have you come for?” asked his grandmother. “I have come to
chastise the Sun and to make him go more slowly across the heavens. He
goes so fast now that my mother cannot dry the tapa that she takes all
the days of the year to beat out.”
The old woman considered all that Ma-ui said to her. She knew that he
was a hero born, because the birds sang, the pebbles rumbled, the grass
withered, the smoke hung low, the rainbow appeared, the thunder was
heard, the hairless dogs were seen, and even the ants in the grass were
heard to sing in his praise. She decided to give help to him. And she
told him what preparations he was to make for his battle with the Sun.
First of all he was to get sixteen of the strongest ropes that ever
were made. So as to be sure they were the strongest, he was to knit
them himself. And he was to make nooses for them out of the hair of the
head of his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea. When the ropes were ready he was
to come back to her, and she would show him what else he had to do.
Ma-ui made the sixteen ropes; he made them out of the strongest fibre,
and his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, gave him the hair of her head to make
into nooses. Then, with the ropes and the nooses upon them, Ma-ui went
back to his grandmother. She told him where to set the nooses, and she
gave him a magic stone axe with which to do battle with the Sun.
He set the nooses as snares for the Sun, and he dug a hole beside the
roots of the wili-wili tree, and in that hole he hid himself. Soon the
first ray of light, the first leg of the Sun, came over the mountain
wall. It was caught in one of the nooses that Ma-ui had set. One by one
the legs of the Sun came over the rim, and one by one they were caught
in the nooses. One leg was left hanging down the side of the mountain:
it was hard for the Sun to move that leg. At last this last leg came
slowly over the edge of the mountain and was caught in the snare. Then
Ma-ui gathered up the ropes and tied them to the great wili-wili tree.
When the Sun saw that his sixteen legs were held fast by the nooses
that Ma-ui had set he tried to back down the mountain-side and into the
sea again. But the ropes held him, and the wili-wili tree stood the
drag of the ropes. The Sun could not get away. Then he turned all his
burning strength upon Ma-ui. They fought. The man began to strike at
the Sun with his magic axe of stone; and never before did the Sun get
such a beating. “Give me my life,” said the Sun. “I will give you your
life,” said Ma-ui, “if you promise to go slowly across the heavens.” At
last the Sun promised to do what Ma-ui asked him.
They entered into an agreement with each other, Ma-ui and the Sun.
There should be longer days, the Sun making his course slower. But
every six months, in the winter, the Sun might go as fast as he had
been in the habit of going. Then Ma-ui let the Sun out of the snares
which he had set for him. But, lest he should ever forget the agreement
he had made and take to travelling swiftly again, Ma-ui left all the
ropes and the nooses on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la, so that he might see
them every day that he came across the rim of the mountain. And the
mountain was not called A-hele-a-ka-la, the Rays of the Sun, any more,
but Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun. After that came the saying of
the people, “Long shall be the daily journey of the Sun, and he shall
give light for all the peoples’ toil.” And Ma-ui’s mother,
Hina-of-the-Fire, learned that she could pound on the tapa-board until
she was tired, and the farmers could plant and take care of their
crops, and the fishermen could go out to the deep sea and fish and come
back, and the fruits and the plants got heat enough to make them ripen
in their season.