elp rule over them,--he cheerfully
consented to take a temporary wife during his stay in Kauai. His house
and grounds were, therefore, decorated, the nobility was assembled,
musicians and poets and dancers were engaged, and a great feast was
ordered, when a hitch arose over the choice of a bride. Each of the
three leading priests had a marriageable daughter of beauty and proud
descent. How were their claims to be settled? Easily enough, as it fell
out. Laa married all three on the same day, and before his departure
for Raiatea each wife on the same day presented a son to him. From
these three sons sprang the governing families of Oahu and Kauai.

The Misdoing of Kamapua

When a child was born to Olopana, a lord of Oahu, in the twelfth
century, he conceived a dislike to it, and freely alleged that his
brother was its father. Such as dared to speak ill of dignitaries, and
there were gossips in those days, as in all other, chuckled, at safe
distance, that if Olopana's suspicions were correct, the boy should
have somewhat of his--er--uncle's good looks and pleasant manner,
whereas he was hairy, ill-favored, and, as his nature disclosed itself
with increasing years, violent, thievish, treacherous; in short, he was
Olopana at his worst. Every day added to the bad feeling between the
boy and his father, for when he had grown old enough to appreciate
the position to which he had been born, the youngster repaid the
hate of his parent, and strove to deserve it. Vain the attempt of
the mother to make peace between them and direct her offspring into
paths of rectitude. In contempt, the chief put the name of Kamapua,
or hog-child, on the boy, and in some of the older myths he actually
figures as a half-monster with a body like that of a man, but with
the head of a boar.

Kamapua gathered the reckless and incorrigible boys of the neighborhood
about him, and the band became a terror by night, for in the dark they
broke the taboo and heads as well, stripped trees of their fruit,
stole swine and fowls, staved in the bottoms of canoes, cut trees,
and in order to look as bad as he felt, the leader cropped his hair
and his beard (when one came to him) to the shortness of an inch,
tattooed the upper half of his body in black, and wore a hog-skin
over his shoulders with bristles outward. On attaining his majority he
left his parents, taking with him some of his reprobates, and set up
in life as a brigand, making his home in lone