s does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light--

he is merely expressing a commonplace of primitive mental experience,
transformation stories being of the essence of Polynesian as of much
primitive speculation about the natural objects to which his eye is
drawn with wonder and delight.

_Footnotes to Section III, 3: Analogy_

[Footnote 1: Turner, Samoa, p. 220.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid.; Moerenhout, I, 407-410.]

[Footnote 3: Turner, Samoa, pp. 216-221; Williams and Calvert, I, p.
110.]

[Footnote 4: Williams and Calvert, I, 118.]

[Footnote 5: Moerenhout, II, 146.]

4. THE DOUBLE MEANING; PLAYS ON WORDS

Analogy is the basis of many a double meaning. There is, in fact, no
lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it some
implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an adroit and
practiced mind to unravel.

This riddling tendency of figurative verse seems to be due to the
aristocratic patronage of composition, whose tendency was to exalt
language above the comprehension of the common people, either by
obscurity, through ellipsis and allusion, or by saying one thing and
meaning another. A special chief's language was thus evolved, in which
the speaker might couch his secret resolves and commands unsuspected by
those who stood within earshot. Quick interpretation of such symbols was
the test of chiefly rank and training. On the other hand, the wish to
appear innocent led him to hide his meaning in a commonplace
observation. Hence nature and the objects and actions of everyday life
were the symbols employed. For the heightened language of poetry the
same chiefly strain was cultivated--the allusion, metaphor, the double
meaning became essential to its art; and in the song of certain periods
a play on words by punning and word linking became highly artificial
requirements.[1]

Illustrations of this art do not fall upon a foreign ear with the force
which they have in the Polynesian, because much of the skill lies in
tricks with words impossible to translate, and often the jest depends
upon a custom or allusion with which the foreigner is unfamiliar. It is
for this reason that such an art becomes of social value, because only
the chief who keeps up with the fashion and the follower who hangs upon
the words of his chief can translate the allus