to the highest pitch. ... In their firmnesswe find reassurance for our ho]x.- and be-lief in the cause of world peace and arereaffirmed in our judgment that foreign

mission work has been highly effective.In fact, it is only in the success ofChristian foreign missions that we dare toho|>e for world peace."—G. R. W .

Hawaiian Riddles and ProverbsBy Martha Warren Beckwith

Tlir Folklurr FouncUtion, Vassal1Collr^r

MR. HENRY JUDD'S recently pub-lished collection of riddles and pro-verbial sayings of Hawaii, issued as Bul-letin 77 of the Bernice Pauahi BishopMuseum, in so far as they represent anative art adds one more to the linkswhich connect old Hawaii with the cul-ture area of the eastern rather than of thewestern continent. No American Indiantribe has developed riddling as a socialart with anything like the security of wontwhich this collection and other evidencefrom Hawaiian legend and romance provenative. Even a three-hundred-year con-tact with European riddling and wise-cracking has not given to the Indian anyconspicuous taste for the pithy and sen-tentious saying or the paradoxical anal-ogy which constitute these forms of oral-art. It is therefore safe to assume thatthe proved facility of the I lawaiian inIxith accomplishments was gained, notindependently, but from a long period ofusage before his migration to this islandgroup, and since the I lawaiian sharesarts with other Pacific Islanders, it islikely that they were practiced in someculture center prior to migration into thePacific. They are not the gift of Ameri-can contact or of Polynesian invention.but are a |>art of the old-world culturewhich the Polynesians brought with theminto their island homes. In what form,then, did they bring over the practice?

Our own folk riddle is composed abouteveryday objects. The trick is to de-scribe one object in terms of anotherwhich it resembles in some particular,generally in the form of a paradox, or inthe sound of the name, commonly called"punning." It is this sound analogywhich has survived today in sophisticatewit. An even more primitive conceptionof riddling is that which describes anobject by a single trait like color, motion,number. Or it jxises a question impos-sible to answer, such as the number ofstars in the sky or of drops in the sea, orone based on a particular exjwerience likeSamson's, who made a riddle out of the

honeycomb formed in the carcase of adead lion by the roadside.

These riddlings are found in old Euro-pean folk tales which tell of competitionsof wit Upon which high bets are laid oreven life itself, as the stake. In an oldScotch-English ballad the devil woos amaiden with riddles: the witty answeralone frees the maiden from his power,The Scandinavian Edda contains ''ency-clopedic poems" which enumerate all thewisdom of the world. In one of these thegod Odin contends with the wisest of thegiant race and traps him at length withthe question "What spoke Odin himselfin the ears of his son ( Balder ), ere in thebale-fire he burned?", a question hi)|x>s-sible tor any but the god himself to an-swer. The Edipus riddle seems to re-flect some old pre-Greek culture in whichthe riddling contest was a recognizedmode of rival competition. The visitorto the recently excavated town of the ma-gician Sirikap near the site of Taxila inthe Punjab will recall how the hero Ra-salu defeated Sirikap in riddling beforehe was admitted to the "white seat" with-in the palace. Rasalu is still a well-knownhero of the Punjab and the sites of his ad-ventures are still known to the folk. Inthe Arabian Nights tales the slave girl.Tawaddud, challenges to a contest oflearning the learned doctors who gathered■about the court of llaroun al Raschid.The physician is routed by means of aquaint riddle about the loop-shaped handleof the water-skin, the philosopher by theriddling calculation, common today in theSpanish West Indies, of the pigeons onthe tree who said to those on the ground,"If one of you come up to us. you willbe a third ]>art of us all."

Some scholars believe that the riddleform is derived from that of the proverbor sententious saying. It is true that manyproverbs are themselves couched in rid-dling Speech. They are meant to convey,under cover of a figure, a threat, a curse,or a warning. In a society where secretconference is denied to political or domes-

tic plotters who live always within earshotof spies, a somewhat complicated courseof action may be conveyed in the form ofapparently innocent speech. This habitseems to have been common in the SouthSeas. Several of Pomander's stories re-cord such an occurrence. In a tale re-corded by Fison from the Tongans, achief on a canoe voyage runs out of food.He bids his man "Go now and see if therebe any banana stalks left on the weatherhalf of the canoe." The words convey anorder to club one of the women, whoseplace is in that part of the canoe. But suchriddling speech as this is not directly re-lated to the proverb, which is regularlyformed upon an abstract or general ideaand applied in popular use to a specificcase, or it is derived from a particularcase which, like our "Hobson's choice."takes on a general application. An illus-tration of such a case in Mr. Judd's col-lection is the saying of Kamehaineha tohis men that "Six islands are free to allbut the seventh is for Kamehameha." Tin-chief wittily uses the biblical restrictionupon the Sabbath day as the model for hisown tabu Upon his favorite wife. On theother hand, the saying. "Back like a preci-pice, face like a moon," is a general com-pliment to any perfect form. "Smallcanoes dash up the spray" is said to onewho gets angry over trifles. "Never mindif the layer at the bottom id the oven isburned, but watch that at the top" is acouncel to watch the mood of chiefs andignore that id commoners.

()n the whole. Hawaiian proverbs re-ferring to old legendary persons are rare.A reference to the "nets of Makali'i hang-ing high'" is used as a reproach to a stingyperson, the "rattling of the bones ofI lua" to warn against impiety. Liloa ismentioned as rising to greatness through"the steps of the temple," that is. throughfostering the priests. The missionariesknew well how to make use of the Hawai-ian taste for sententious sayings. Whenhis parishioners reproached Mr. Lyonsfor letting men into the church too easilyhe answered, "What holds fast to theheavens (the faultless) belongs to Cod,what falls below (the faulty) belongs toLyons." More common are allusions toplace names. A wanderer is likened to theparasitic vim—the "trunkless tree"—ofMana on Kauai. The "mirage of Mana"is alluded to by the skeptical listener toan unlikely story just as we say "tell thatto the marines." Lele, the old name forLahaina, and Kou for Honolulu, occur inproverbs,

Hawaiian riddling involves a different

332 THE FRIEND February, 1932

technique from the proverb. Althoughone art doubtless plays into the hands ofthe other, it is doubtful whether one is adirect development of the other. Prover-bial savings use popular allusions in ariddling fashion, but riddling seems ratherto derive from the discipline of learningin the hands id the ruling classes. It is anexpert rather than a popular art. Skill inthe art implies a knowledge of the geog-raphy and the natural features id thegroup. So far as I can see, riddling inHawaii does not extend to social history,genealogy or legendary allusions. It de-mands complete objective knowledgeabout the material world, a retentivememory, and quickness in matching an-alogies, either in the sounds of words orin descriptive elements id objects. 'Un-skilled tiddler Icarus about "the thingsabove and the things below, in the up-lands and in the lowlands: the things idday and the things of night : id death andlife, of good and evil." It is the naturalphilosophy of opposites which he mustmaster.

In Hawaiian riddling the question isnot so much one of guessing an answeras of matching one skilful analogy withanother, and if a pun is successfullyemployed it scores for the contestant.The game of riddling has a name anda technique. The famoirs Lono'-i-ka-makahiki acquired it among his otheraccomplishments useful to chiefs. Thedebates are accompanied by high bet-ting. In the legends a ruling chief betsall his possessions, a wandering one hisbones, that is, his life, 'file Pomandercollection contains a line version of alegendary contest between a chief ofKauai famous as a riddling expert andthe son of one id his victims from Punaon Hawaii. A fuller version of the sametale was printed by Moses K. Nakuinain 1(X)2 in a little pamphlet called Kala-pana, dedicated to all true Hawaiians"bone of my bone and blixxl of my blood,from Hawaii of Keawe to Kauai ofMano." Folk versions id a similar storyare current. Mrs. Puktii says that inPuna certain families refuse to answerriddles, saving "Ka mea keia i holeholc iac ka iwi ova kitpuna—"lt was for thisthat the bones Of our ancestors werestripped (of flesh)."

This touch id reality leaves us in doubtwhether the legend does not representactual custom. An examination of thiscollection indicates that the more nativeHawaiian riddle follows the form set inthe riddle contest rather than that of ourown folk riddling. Po iuka, po iwaena.po i km, says the riddle; that is, "Night

ill the uplands, night between, night onthe shore." The expert in riddling how-ever knows that the words do not referto the sense of universal and broodingnight over the landscape, but to threeplants typical of these regions and whichall contain the syllable po, "night,"—thepopoulu banana growing in the uplands,the popolo plant id the coast land, theptdiuclmc of the beaches. Evidently theriddle is not to be guessed but to bematched. 1 think the riddle of the ka clc.the dark, is the retort, but the translationis unsatisfactory. For traditional wisdom,too. note the riddles that enumerate proc-esses, like "The food that is shaken, thefood that is cracked, the food that iscrushed* the f 1 that is roasted." thatis. the kukui nut. Not that analogy isabsent with its accompanying tendencyto personification. The riddle of thegrass house. -"Plaited all around, plaitedat the bottom, leaving an opening," mayalso be given as "The men that stand(posts), the men that lie down (battens),the men doubled up (thatch). The kukuinut is "the fat fish that dances on thetips of the lingers" or "my little fish that\ciu eat and twist, eat and twist," withreference both to the substitution of thenut for fish as a relish and to the move-ment of the lingers in taking up a pinchof the grated meat. Or it is "the fish in-dulged in by the hunchback" because ofthe crook of the fingers in pushing up themorsel. A fishnet has "four hundredhills (knots), four thousand streams(strands)." A hook and line is "a littlehunchback with long guts." The sea is"a log for tapa-beating. ceaselessly sound-ing." Some of these simpler riddles mustbe of late composition; for example, theflat-iron as "a boat which sails betweenislands." "the long-bearded race" of thegoats, the "fish, head downward, tail up-ward" of the onion, or the pun on thename of Kalakaua—"This is the day ( la)to declare war (kaua)." But there areother much more obscure riddles whichseem more genuinely native, such as(8-12) on the taro. (184) on the scrof-ulous neck. (224. 225) interpreted as poipounder and gourd container, (235) onthe group marriage of brothers or sis-ters. The exact translation id such rid-dles as these may throw more light onthe old native art of Hawaiian riddling.

An interesting article. “Samoan Education,”by Dr. Peter Buck, of Bishop

Museum, will be printed in Thk PIIXNDfor April.

NOTESfrom theFIELDHawaii Advisory Council:

The Advisory Council for Young Peo-ple's Work on the Island of Hawaii metin llonokaa on February 3, 1932, and in1 lilo on February 10.

At the former meeting Mr. Frank C.Atherton was guest of the group. Plansfor more thorough and extensive workwith the young people of the "Big Island"were considered.Distributing the financial Load:

The Hawaiian Board adopted Presi-dent Penult's phrase about the cut in itsbudget. The cut is an attempt to "distribute the financial load." Severalchurches are seeking to raise a little moremoney this year so as to refund to thepastors the cut which had to be made insalaries.

It may be that this cut is going to be avaluable experience after all. If thechurches find it possible to carry a littlemore of the financial cost of their work,the results ought to be beneficial. Cer-tainly the pastors ought not to be obligedto take a cut in their already meagre sal-aries.The Pastor's Family:

Someone made a very significant state-ment in our office the other day. He wasspeaking of the marvellous influence ofthe pastor and his family in the variouscommunities of our Islands. He said, "Ifthe pastors and their wives did nothingmore than to raise a family and educatethem, the value to Hawaii would justifytheir salaries."

Some day we may find time to list thesplendid work for our Islands by thesplendid sons and daughters from pastors'homes. It will be a long list, and theyhave rendered great service.

Evangelism:The Hawaiian Department is sponsor-

ing a series of Evangelistic meetings on()ahu. These meetings are arousing muchinterest among the peopleCrossroads Confers With Vories:

The Crossroads new plant committeehad a very interesting meeting on Febru-ary 11 with Mr. W. M. Vories of theOmi Hachiman Mission in Jajian. Mr.Vories was passing through Honolulu onthat day. He has been much interestedin the Crossroads Church and has donated

THE FRIENDFebruary, 1932 333