[Footnote 300: _Kaili_. The full form is said to be
_Ka-ili-lau-o-ke-koa_—Skin-like-the-leaf-of-the-koa. In the
text of the mele this name is analyzed into its parts and
written as if the phrase at the end were an appellative and
not an integral part of the name itself. This was a mythical
character of unusual beauty, a person of superhuman power,
_kupua_, a mistress of the art of surf-riding, which passion
she indulged in the waters about Wai-lua.]
[Footnote 301: _Hooipo-i-ka-Malanai_. A mythical princess of
Wailua, the grandmother of Kaili. This oft-quoted phrase,
literally meaning to make love in the (gently-blowing)
trade-wind, has become almost a stock expression, standing
for romantic love, or love-making.]
[Footnote 302: _Lehua-wehe_. The piece of ocean near the mouth
of the Wailua river in which Kaili indulged her passion for
surf-riding.]
[Footnote 303: _Kalu-kalu o Kewá_. _Kalu-kalu_ may mean a
species of soft, smooth grass specially fitted for sliding
upon, which flourished on the inclined plain of Kewá, Kauai.
One would sit upon a mat, the butt end of a coconut leaf, or
a sled, while another dragged it along. The Hawaiian name for
this sport is _pahe’e_. _Kalu-kalu_ is also the name applied
to “a very thin gauze-like kapa.” (See Andrews’s Hawaiian
Dictionary.) If we suppose the poet to have clearly intended
the first meaning, the figure does not tally with the
following verse, the fifteenth. Verses 14 and 15 would thus
be made to read:
I desire the kalu-kalu (grass) of Kewá,
That is riding the surf of Maka-iwa.
This is an impossible figure and makes no sense. If, on the
other hand, we take another version and conceive that the
bard had in mind the gauze-like robe of _kalu-kalu_—using
this, of course, as a figure for the person clad in such a
robe—the rendering I have given,
I pine for the sylph, robed in gauze,
Who rides the surf Maka-iwa,
would not only make a possible, but a poetic, picture. Let
the critical reader judge which of these two versions hits
closer to common sense and probability.]
[Translation.]
_Song._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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