It has been said that modern music has molded and developed itself under the influence of three causes, (1) a comprehension of the nature of music itself, (2) a feeling or inspiration, and (3) the influence of poetry. Guided by this generalization, it may be said that Hawaiian poetry was the nurse and pedagogue of that stammering infant, Hawaiian music; that the words of the mele came before its rhythmic utterance in song; and that the first singers were the priests and the eulogists. Hawaiian poetry is far ahead of Hawaiian song in the power to move the feelings. A few words suffice the poet with which to set the picture before one’s eyes, and one picture quickly follows another; whereas the musical attachment remains weak and colorless, reminding one of the nursery pictures, in which a few skeletal lines represent the human frame. Let us now for refreshment and in continued pursuit of our subject listen to a song in the language and spirit of old-time Hawaii, composed, however, in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is given as arranged by Miss Lillian Byington, who took it down as she heard it sung by an old Hawaiian woman in the train of Queen Liliuokalani, and as the author has since heard it sung by Miss Byington’s pupils of the Kamehameha School for Girls. The song has been slightly idealized, perhaps, by trimming away some of the superfluous i’i, but not more than is necessary to make it highly acceptable to our ears and not so much as to take from it the plaintive bewitching tone that pervades the folk-music of Hawaii. The song, the mele, is not in itself much—a hint, a sketch, a sweep of the brush, a lilt of the imagination, a connotation of multiple images which no jugglery of literary art can transfer into any foreign speech. Its charm, like that of all folk-songs and of all romance, lies in its mysterious tug at the heartstrings. [Page 162] VIII—He Inoa no Kamehameha (Old Mele—Kindness of H.R.H. Liliuokalani) Arranged by LILLIAN BYINGTON [Music:] _He Inoa no Kamehameha_ Aia i Waipi’o[315] Paka’alana,[316] Paepae[317] kapu ia o Liloa.[318] He aloha ka wahine pi’i ka pali,[319] Puili ana i ka hua ulei, 5 I ka ai mo’a i ka lau laau.[320] Hoolaau[321] mai o ka welowelo. Ua pe’e pa Kai-a-ulu o Waimea,[322] Ua ola i ku’u kai,[323] Keoloewa,[324] e.