Here in the Great Lakes, with many additional inland lakes, fishing is very popular. This month is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month bringing attention to Hawaii. For some reason, back in 1922 Irish writer and folklorist Padraic Colum "was commissioned to write versions of Hawaiian folklore for young people. This resulted in the publication of three volumes of his versions of tales from the islands." Why wasn't a Hawaiian asked? I've no idea, but the best known of those books, At the Gateways of the Day, not only has the much-loved story of "Pu-nia and the King of the Sharks" but another tale of unusual fishing. Colum obviously knew how to get the most out of his four months in Hawaii! It's worth reading his Introduction to the book talking about the Polynesian differences from European folktales and his re-telling.
The book includes "Helps to Pronunciation", but it would be a good idea to look further online. Hawaiian Alphabet: a complete beginner's guide/ is a good starting point, followed by searching out audio pronunciation of specific words. Getting comfortable with the names is probably the hardest part to non-Islanders telling their stories.
The book contains many tales about the great Hawaiian hero, Maui, also the Hawaiian little people, the Menhune, and talks about Hawaiian mythology, but I find the stories about "ordinary people" like Punia and this tale of a family fishing much more approachable.
Oh, and a fathom is approximately six feet, but originally was the span of a man's outstretched arms, so the ten fathom canoe was quite large.
Happy telling while you fish!
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| 800-year-old pearl-shell fish hooks at the National Museum - Cook Islands |
The Fish-Hook of Pearl.
There are fish-hooks and fish-hooks, but the most wonderful fish-hook that any one ever heard of was the fish-hook owned by Ku-ula. It was a fish-hook of pearl-shell; and every time Ku-ula went fishing he took a canoe, not five fathoms or eight fathoms in length, but ten fathoms, and when he fished with that hook (Ka-hu-oi was the name it had) the canoe would be filled up with the catch.
And it was the finest of fish, the aku fish, that would rise to that hook. He would let it down into the water, and the aku would throw themselves into the canoe. Ku-ula was rich because of all the fine fish he could catch with his pearl hook. It had been given to him by a bird that was called Ka-manu-wai, and this bird would sit on the rail of the canoe that Ku-ula went fishing in and eat some of the fish that Ku-ula caught.
One day when Ku-ula went fishing outside of Mamala the King of that place went fishing there too. The King caught few fish, and none of them were fine ones. He looked, and he saw Ku-ula fishing, and he saw that the aku fish were jumping in hundreds around the hook that the fisherman let down. His attendants told him of the pearl hook that was called Ka-hu-oi, and the King made up his mind to have this hook. He sent for Ku-ula, and he made him give up the hook that the bird Ka-manu-wai had given him.
After that Ku-ula caught no more aku fish; the bird Ka-manu-wai, not getting the food it liked, flew away; its eyes were closed with hunger where it roosted, and the place where that bird roosted is called Kau-maka-pili, “Roosting with Closed Eyes,” to this day. And Ku-ula got poorer and poorer, and he and his family got more and more hungry from that day.
And so it came about that when his child Ai-ai was born they had no food for him. They let him float down the stream, putting him in just above the place where the bird Ka-manu-wai roosted. The child floated down; a rock in the stream held him, and there little Ai-ai stayed in the shallow water. That very day the King’s daughter, who was then a young girl, was bathing in the stream with her attendants. She found little Ai-ai, and she took him to the King’s house; there Ai-ai grew up, and he was tended by the King’s daughter while he was a child.
When he grew up he was a strong and handsome youth. The King’s daughter who had saved him came to love him; she would have him marry her, and at last he and she got married.
It happened that one day after they were married his wife was sick, and she asked Ai-ai to get her some fish. He took a rod, and he went fishing along the shore. He caught a few fish, and he brought them home to her. After a while she was sick again, and she had a longing for fish again. And this time she wanted the aku, the fine fish from the depth of the sea.
He told her then that he could not fish for aku unless he had a canoe and a fish-hook of pearl. When she heard him say that, she remembered that her father had a pearl fish-hook. So she went to the King, her father. When she came before him, he said, “What is it you want, my daughter?” She said, “A canoe for my husband, and a pearl fish-hook.” He told her that her husband might take a canoe out of his canoe-shed, and then he said to her, “I have a pearl fish-hook, and I will give it to you for him.”
So he gave a pearl fish-hook to his daughter, and she hurried home with it. Now Ai-ai, since he had grown up, had known his father and had heard how the King had taken away the hook Ka-hu-oi from him. So when he saw the pearl fish-hook in his wife’s hands he was overjoyed; he took it from her, and he got a canoe in the King’s shed, and he went out to fish in the sea.
A bird came down and watched the shining fish-hook that he held. It rested on the rail of the canoe as he paddled out to sea. It watched him lower the hook. Its eyes were half closed, but now it opened them wide and looked down after the shining hook. This was the bird Ka-manu-wai that had given the hook to his father, Ai-ai knew; now the bird was going to eat plenty of the fine aku.
But no aku came on the hook, and no aku dashed up on the canoe on seeing the shining thing in the water. The bird closed its eyes again. It gave a croak and then flew away.
Ai-ai came back to his wife without any aku for her. Again she was sick, and she begged Ai-ai again to get her the aku fish. “It may be,” he said, “that the King has another pearl hook. Go to him once more and ask him for one. Tell him that in the calabash in which he keeps the fishing utensils that he used long ago there may be another pearl fish-hook.”
So again she went before the King. “I have come for a pearl fish-hook so that my husband may go out and catch me the aku fish that I long for.” “I gave the pearl fish-hook that I had.” “In the calabash in which you keep the fishing utensils that you used long ago there may be another pearl fish-hook.”
The King ordered that this calabash be brought to him. He searched amongst all the utensils that were in it, and at last he found the pearl fish-hook that he had taken. He had left it there and had forgotten it, for he had gone fishing only once after he had taken it from Ku-ula.
And now he gave the hook Ka-hu-oi to his daughter. She hurried home, and she put the pearl hook into the hands of her husband Ai-ai. He went straight down to the beach and took out the canoe and went fishing in the place where his father used to go. As he went the bird Ka-manu-wai flew down and lighted on the rail of the canoe. It opened wide its eyes to watch him let down the shining hook.
When he came to Mamala the aku began to jump to the hook. They threw themselves up and into the canoe. They filled it up—even that ten-fathom canoe was deep with them, and Ai-ai was hardly strong enough to paddle it back. The bird Ka-manu-wai ate of the fish, and as it ate the gleam came back into its plumage, and it was a wide-eyed, strong-winged bird once more.
It took the pearl fish-hook and flew away with it. But every day it would come back with the hook when Ai-ai took out his canoe. The bird guarded the hook and would never let it go into a stranger’s hands again. Sometimes it would bring Ka-hu-oi to Ku-ula, Ai-ai’s father; for the old man took to going out in his canoe again, and he would fish for aku outside of Mamala.
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Colum not only tells about his general sources in the book's Introduction, but concludes with Notes including this about "The Fish-Hook of Pearl"
This simple tale is given in the Fornander Collection, Vol. IV, Part III, of the Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Museum, with the title Kaao no Aiai, the Legend of Aiai.
Project Gutenberg has three volumes of the Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-lore with Archive.org having volumes 4,5, and 6 for anyone wanting to fish even further into these tales.
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| Illustration for At the Gateways of the Day by Juliette May Fraser |
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