f, his
desire to be remembered to posterity by the saying "the daughters of
Hulumaniani"--all these incidents reflect the course of everyday life in
aristocratic Polynesian society and hence belong to the common stock of
Hawaiian romance.

Such being the material of Polynesian romance--a world in which gods and
men play their part; a world which includes the heavens yet reflects
naturalistically the beliefs and customs of everyday life, let us next
consider how the style of the story-teller has been shaped by his manner
of observing nature and by the social requirements which determine his
art--by the world of nature and the world of man. And in the first place
let us see under what social conditions Polynesia has gained for itself
so high a place, on the whole, among primitive story-telling people for
the richness, variety, and beauty of its conceptions.[1]

Polynesian romance reflects its own social world--a world based upon the
fundamental conception of social rank. The family tie and the inherited
rights and titles derived from it determine a man's place in the
community. The families of chiefs claim these rights and titles from the
gods who are their ancestors.[2] They consist not only in land and
property rights but in certain privileges in administering the affairs
of a group, and in certain acknowledged forms of etiquette equivalent to
the worship paid to a god. These rights are administered through a
system of taboo.[3]

A taboo depends for its force upon the belief that it is divinely
ordained and that to break it means to bring down the anger of the gods
upon the offender. In the case, therefore, of a violation of taboo, the
community forestalls the god's wrath, which might otherwise extend to
the whole number, by visiting the punishment directly upon the guilty
offender, his family or tribe. But it is always understood that back of
the community disapproval is the unappeased challenge of the gods. In
the case of the Polynesian taboo, the god himself is represented in the
person of the chief, whose divine right none dare challenge and who may
enforce obedience within his taboo right, under the penalty of death.
The limits of this right are prescribed by grade. Before some chiefs the
bystander must prostrate himself, others are too sacred to be touched.
So, when a chief dedicates a part of his body to the deity, for an
inferior it is taboo; any act of sacrilege will throw the chief into a
fury of passion. I