.--Puili, bamboo-rattle.]

While the hula puili is undeniably a performance of classical
antiquity, it is not to be regarded as of great dignity or
importance as compared with many other hulas. Its character,
like that of the meles associated with it, is light and
trivial.

The mele next presented is by no means a modern production.
It seems to be the work of some unknown author, a fragment of
folklore, it might be called by some, that has drifted down
to the present generation and then been put to service in the
hula. If hitherto the word _folklore_ has not been used it is
not from any prejudice against it, but rather from a feeling
that there exists an inclination to stretch the application
of it beyond its true limits and to make it include popular
songs, stories, myths, and the like, regardless of its
fitness of application. Some writers, no doubt, would apply
this vague term to a large part of the poetical pieces which
are given in this book.
[Page 114]
On the same principle, why should they not apply the term
folklore to the myths and stories that make up the body of
Roman and Greek mythology? The present author reserves the
term folklore for application to those unappropriated scraps
of popular song, story, myth, and superstition that have
drifted down the stream of antiquity and that reach us in the
scrap-bag of popular memory, often bearing in their battered
forms the evidence of long use.

Mele

Hiki mai, niki mai ka La, e.
Aloha wale ka La e kau nei,
Aia malalo o Ka-wai-hoa,[247]
A ka lalo o Kauai, o Lehua.
5 A Kauai au, ike i ka pali;
A Milo-lii[248] pale ka pali loloa.
E kolo ana ka pali o Makua-iki;[249]
Kolo o Pu-a, he keiki,
He keiki makua-ole ke uwe nei.

[Translation]

_Song_

It has come, it has come; lo the Sun!
How I love the Sun that's on high;
Below it swims Ka-wai-hoa,
Oa the slope inclined from Lehua.
5 On K