(c) Kepelino version. Kane as a triad, Kane, Kana (Ku),
Lono, exists alone in the deep intense night which he has created,
and brings about, first light, then the heavens, then the earth
and the ocean, then sun, moon, and stars. Kane existing alone
chants,
“Here am I on the peak of day, on the peak of night.
The spaces of air,
The blue sky I will make, a heaven,
A heaven for Ku, for Lono,
A heaven for me, for Kane,
Three heavens, a heaven.
Behold the heavens!
There is the heaven,
The great heaven,
Here am I in heaven, the heaven is mine.”
During the first five periods the heavens and earth are created
and the sun, moon, and stars, and plants to clothe the earth. In
the sixth period man is formed.
Kane, Ku, Lono, conceived as a single godhead, mold Kumuhonua, the first man, out of wet soil and he becomes living soil.
They make him a chief to rule over the whole world and place
him with his wife Lalo-honua in Ka-aina-nui-o-Kane (The great
land of Kane), where they live happily until Lalo-honua meets
the “Great seabird with white beak that stands fishing” (Aaia-nui-nukea-a-ku-lawaia) and is seduced to eat the sacred apples of Kane. She goes mad and becomes a seabird. The seabird
carries them both away into the jungle, the trees part and make
a path for them, but the trees return to their places and the
path is lost, hence the name “Hidden land of Kane” for this first
garden home. . . . Death is the penalty for Kumuhonua because he did not keep the command of the god. He gains the
name Kane-la‘a-uli and is jeered at by the people as he goes
weeping and lamenting along the highway. For countless years
he dwells as a refugee on the hill called Pu‘u-o-honua, then he
returns to Kahiki-honua-kele and is buried on a mountain called
Wai-hon(u)a-o-Kumuhonua. There his descendants also are
buried and the place is called “the heaping place of bones” (O-ke-ahuna-iwi).
Beckwith, Martha Warren, Hawaiian Mythology, new intro. Katharine Luomala, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1970, pp. 44-45.
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