Lohiau And The Volcano Princess
: IN THE PACIFIC: Myths & Legends Of Our New Possessions & Protectorate
With gods, as with men, who would speed his affairs must keep them in
his own hands. Pele, the volcano goddess, fell in love with Lohiau,
a Kauaian prince, and in human guise remained with him so long that
her sisters were afraid the Kilauea fires would go out. The prince
took an illness, and appeared to die, ere the honeymoon was over,
so, wrapped in cloth of bark, he was put under guard to lie in
state. When Pele had
came upon her to feel the young man's arms about her once more and
hear the words of love he had such a pretty talent for telling. But,
instead of going herself, she sent her sister Hiika to rescue his
soul and bring it to her. This was a mistake, for the sister was not
a serious creature. Stopping to brave the devils and giant lizards of
the woods, turning the boards of surf-riders to stone for a prank,
and scaring a fisherman by causing him to pull a human head out of
the sea, the sister next found a half-released spirit hovering near
a dying chief. She tied it in a corner of her skirt and slapped the
skirt against a rock, so the chief finished his dying promptly. In
Kauai, at last, her search was rewarded. She saw the ghost of Lohiau
beckoning from a cave, in which it had been imprisoned by demons, who
fled, hissing, on her approach. She broke the bars of moonbeam that
confined it, tied it in her skirt, carried it to its body, restored
the prince to life, then led him to Hawaii and with him scaled the
mountain where Pele was waiting in great dudgeon. For Hiika had been
gone so long on this journey that a wrong construction had been put on
her delay. Lohiau and Hiika had, indeed, learned to esteem each other,
but they had not violated the trust imposed in them by the goddess.
Pele was madly jealous, however. She turned the prince to stone
on the crater brink,--the poor fellow was growing used to dying
now,--and, dismayed by this act of cruelty, Hiika descended through
the five spheres to the dark underworld where the spirits lived. She
hoped that the young man's ghost would follow her, for pity in his
sufferings had fast increased to love. As the spirit did not come,
she returned to the surface of the earth and went on a voyage of
search in a boat that a god had lent to her,--a boat of cowrie shell,
which in overland travel would shrink so that it could be carried in
the hand; then, at the word, would swell to a stately barge of pearl
with ivory masts and sails as white as the snow on the mountain. This
vessel moved with the speed of the wind in any direction the occupant
indicated by pointing the finger. The prince's wandering spirit was
found in Kauai, its old home; was taken by a messenger to the stone
image on the crater, and put back into the body, and the prince lived
again. Pele was by this time in a soft and repentant humor. She
asked forgiveness of Lohiau and bade him love and wed her sister,
who was good, and had earned his love. This Lohiau did, whereupon
Pele restored to life several of Hiika's friends whom, also, in her
first anger, she had turned to statues of lava.
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