When we consider that the Chinese find pleasure in musical performances on instruments that divide the scale into intervals less than half a step, and that the Arabian musical scale included quarter-steps, we shall be obliged to admit that this statement of Mascagni is not merely a fling at our musical science. Here are introduced the words and notes of a musical recitation done after the manner of the hula by a Hawaiian professional and his wife. Acquaintance with the Hawaiian language and a feeling for the allusions connoted in the text of the song would, of course, be a great aid in enabling one to enter into the spirit of the performance. As these [Page 155] adjuncts will be available to only a very few of those who will read these words, in the beginning are given the words of the oli with which he prefaced the song, with a translation of the same, and then the mele which formed the bulk of the song, also with a translation, together with such notes and comments as are necessary to bring one into intellectual and sympathetic relation with the performance, so far as that is possible under the circumstances. It is especially necessary to familiarize the imagination with the language, meaning, and atmosphere of a mele, because the Hawaiian approached song from the side of the poet and elocutionist. Further discussion of this point must, however, be deferred to another division of the subject: _He Oli_ Halau[310] Hanalei i ka nini a ka ua; Kumano[311] ke po’o-wai a ka liko;[312] Nahá ka opi-wai[313] a a Wai-aloha; O ke kahi koe a hiki i Wai-oli.[314] Ua ike ’a. [Translation.] _A Song_ Hanalei is a hall for the dance in the pouring rain; The stream-head is turned from its bed of fresh green; Broken the dam that pent the water of love— Naught now to hinder its rush to the vale of delight. You’ve seen it. [Footnote 310: _Halau_. The rainy valley of Hanalei, on Kauai, is here compared to a halau, a dance-hall, apparently because the rain-columns seem to draw together and inclose the valley within walls, while the dark foreshortened vault of heaven covers it as with a roof.] [Footnote 311: _Kumano_. A water-source, or, as here, perhaps, a sort of dam or loose stone wall that was run out into a stream for the purpose of diverting a portion of it into a new channel.]