Hawaii’s heritage

A beautiful ‘lei’ for Hawaii’s heritage

’Olclo No’eau. Hawaiian Proverbs and Sayings. By Mary Kawena Pukui. Published by Bishop Museum, Special Publications No. 71, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1983. xix, 351 pp.

Isbn 0 910240 92 2.

In this splendid and sumptuous collection of over 2900 sayings, Mary Kawena Pukui emerges as one of Hawaii’s most skilled and persevering artists or, to put it in the fine imagery of saying 714, she is “A lone tree, a lehua of Ka’ala”. (Ka’ala is a mountain on Oahu.) The sayings recorded here represent the work of a lifetime for Pukui, since she collected her first ones around 1910 at the age of 15, and continued to do so throughout her long career at the Bishop Museum.

Long before she was officially hired as a translator in 1937, her uncle had predicted that she would one day work in “Pauahi’s house.”

Although her father was an American, Pukui was released to her mother’s mother and grew up in her household. Two results of this were instruction in traditional ways, and a more

than usual interest in the Hawaiian language. Over the years her interests have led her to collaborate with S.H. Elbert, a University of Hawaii profes sor, on three separate Hawaiian dictionaries (published in 1957, 1964 and 1971), a book of Hawaiian place names (1974), and a Hawaiian grammar (1979). ’O/e/o No’eau is the fine culmination of Pukui’s concern for the preservation of the Hawaiian language, and her admiration for its traditional charm and character. In this book she shows herself a first rate artist who indeed gives “the voice of life” to the Hawaiian heritage. The Russian novelist Solzhenitsyn turned to collections of Russian proverbs to get at the best in the Russian language, and he is said to keep these at his side while writing.

All who wish to approach the Hawaiian language in this spirit will find themselves able to do so here. ‘Tutu Haole”, as she was once called because her father was Caucasian, deserves the deepest gratitude for plac ing them on record.

The 2942 sayings are arranged alphabetically accor

ding to the Hawaiian alphabet of 12 letters. Nearly half of the entries fall under just two letters (758 under H and 668 under K), with three letters getting more than 200 entries (A, P, O), five letters getting more than 100 (M, N, E, U, I), and two letters fewer than 100 (L, W). The sayings are arranged in two columns on a page, and each one has the Hawaiian saying followed by an English translation, and in most cases an English gloss.

The content of the sayings is most varied, ranging from proverbs, aphorisms and ad ages to practical lore in a variety of fields, as well as folklore and historical allusions. Others might simply be Hawaiian ren derings of English phrases, such as “bad luck”, or similes and sentence fragments. Geogra phy and nature are often used as symbols to convey human meanings. The brief “Is at Koloa” (saying 47) is glossed as “A play on ko (drawn) and loa (long) drawn a long way under. Drunk.” Another saying (854) states “Only a covering of mist”, which is “Said of a person who is a mere figurehead . . . Like the mist, he merely nestles on the peak. ” At least one (saying 2900) has the makings of a beast fable. We learn that “turkey-feathered women” are really “prostitutes who carry on with sailors in order to obtain finery to adorn

themselves.” An especially fine instance of natural imagery is found in 2940: “The whirlwind twists, and up goes the dust.”/ “With wrath, out come words that are unpleasant to hear.” ’O/e/o No’eau is richly illus trated with small motifs (eight in all, four of flora and four of fauna) interspersed throughout the book, and full-page illustra tions opposite the first entries under a letter. These were done by Dietrich Varez, who moved from Berlin to Hawaii in 1948.

The book has six indexes at the end. The general index (pp 324-44) is a virtual concord ance to the English translations and glosses; the other five (pp 344-51) concern place names, personal names, birds, marine fauna, and flora.

The preface by Bishop Museum editorial staff and the introduction (really a biography of Pukui) by Eleanor-a-I Wil liamson convey the impression that their labors, though not represented as essays, are offered in the spirit of a Festschrift to Mary Pukui, who entered hospital in 1980. This should be only the first of many tributes offered to her. Since she was bom in Ka’u, Hawaii, she is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding people ever to come from there, and she richly deserves the acclaim found in one of her recorded sayings (1605); “Ka’u, regal in

the glades.”

M. L. Berg.