American Anthropologist [N.S., 24, 1922] pp311-331

Hawaiian Riddling

by Martha W. Beckwith

MUCH in the psychology of the Polynesian has been shown to resemble closely that of the prehistoric civilizations which grouped about the Mediterranean. The taste for riddling is a minor but no less interesting example of this parallelism in mental habit and training, and the part played by the riddling contest in Hawaiian story is directly comparable with that which it plays in old European literary sources like the Scandinavian Edda or the Greek tale of Oedipus and the riddle of the Sphinx.¹ In some Hawaiian stories of the ancient past, the contest of wit is represented as one of the accomplishments of chiefs, taking its place with games of skill like arrow-throwing or checkers, with tests of strength like boxing or wrestling, and with the arts of war such as sling-stone and spear-throwing as a means of rivalry. It is played as a betting contest, upon the results of which contestants even stake their lives. There are definite rules of the game, a definite training preliminary to it, and the decisions, even in the case of an unpopular rival, seem to be judged openly and with impartial fairness. Such a wit-contest is called hoʻopaʻapaʻa, a word somewhat grandly translated by Andrews, Thrum, and others, as the "art of disputation." In its narrower sense, the expert in hoʻopaʻapaʻa depends upon the art of riddling. It is the object of this paper to describe this practice of riddling as it is [312] represented in the modern folk-lore of Hawaiʻi and in old Hawaiian tradition.

Although no Hawaiian riddles have, to my knowledge, ever been published, a very great number of both proverbs and riddles are current even today among the folk and differ in no respect from the metaphorical riddling or the word-play known all over the eastern continent, but so far unreported from American Indian tribes. The few specimens here set down were collected for me in Honolulu from a Hawaiian informant, Mrs. Mary Pukui, who belongs to an old Puna family, and translated by Miss Laura Green, whose thorough knowledge of the vernacular makes her an authority upon genuine Hawaiian matters.

Fornander's collection of Hawaiian folk-tales recently published with text and translation by the Bishop Museum in Honolulu¹⁸, is our chief source for knowledge of the treatment of the riddling contest in Hawaiian story. Turning to this collection, we find six tales in which such a contest is described in some detail. In two of them, the term hoʻopaʻapaʻa is expressly used to name the art. These six are:

Of these, the story called Kaipalaoa, or "The Hoʻopaʻapaʻa Youngster," is by far the fullest and most important. It tells of a lad whose father's bones, together with those of many other contestants, lie bleaching before the enclosure of a famous chief of Kauaʻi noted for his success in riddling. The lad practises the art of hoʻopaʻapaʻa and in a long riddling debate outdoes all the wits of Kauaʻi and avenges his father's death.

It will, I think, be possible to show that this story is the source of a similar episode in the legend of Kipakailiuli in which the hero visits Kauaʻi and outwits a champion boxer, wrestler, and riddler, in the arts by which the Kauaʻi chief has terrorized the island. The situations are similar. In both cases a champion from the district of Puna, in Hawaiʻi, worsts a cruel chief of Kauaʻi who has long terrorized the island. But in the episodic story, the elaborate word-contest is replaced by a couple of trivial riddles such as might easily be substituted by one unfamiliar [318] with the story in full, but wishing to use the incident to complete the record of the hero's adventures.¹⁹ The other four riddling episodes seem to be independent. In the story of Lono, this famous chief of Hawaiʻi visits the powerful chief of Oʻahu on purpose to engage in a betting contest, called hoʻopaʻapaʻa, and in every encounter wins over his powerful antagonist. In Pikoiakaala, the demi-god of the Rat family bets against the champion rat-shooter of the royal family of Oʻahu, and wins through his skill in punning. In Kuapakaa, the son of a banished counsellor of the great chief of Hawaiʻi wins in various betting contests with his father's detractors, until they are finally all put to death and his father reinstated in favor. An independent episode in the life of Kapunohu (whose legend is told in full in Vol. V, 214-225) relates how this hero is worsted at betting by the tricks of two young men whom he has formerly defeated. Examining these stories in detail, we find that it is only in its narrower sense that the hoʻopaʻapaʻa contest is confined to matching riddles. Any test of superiority, it would seem from the contest, may be employed to place a rival at a disadvantage, especially a guest who comes as a stranger and sets up pretensions to equal rank with the established ruler of the district or island. In those stories in which the hoʻopaʻapaʻa contest is directly alluded to, the successful contestant is in this position of guest; and it seems to be legitimate by the rules of the game to take him at whatever disadvantage this isolation from his supporters involves. Unless he [319] is in a position to defend himself, he must never challenge what ever insult his host sees fit to put upon him. If he does challenge it, stakes are set and he must prove his claim to skill equal to that of his host by whatever tests of superiority he thinks he can meet. He is, however, at liberty to decline any particular test in which he knows himself to be unskilled. It is only the rash boaster who will attempt more than he can perform; the true hero knows his own strength. If in the excitement of the game he undertakes something beyond it, he must employ his wits to help him out. Moreover, he does not necessarily depend upon his own strength or skill; he is at liberty to call upon a follower to speak or act for him. For this reason, high chiefs gathered about themselves those skilled in any competitive art, and men who wished to attain distinction sought notice at their courts by challenging the seasoned wits and seeking to displace them in their lord's estimation.

In a number of stories, definite allusion is made to training in the art of the hoʻopaʻapaʻa. In the story of Lono-who-came-from-Kahaki [Kahiki], the boy, visiting his father's treasure-house, discards as worthless the implements of sport and the wooden war-club "fit only to poke hot stones out of an oven"; but commends the war-spears, sling, and the images of the gods. He says, "That makes three things in your keeping that are of value; I will take care of these things!" and he becomes expert with spear and sling, as also in wrestling. On the circuit of the island, he sees an old man with gray hair reaching below the waist whom he at first takes for a god, but, learning he is merely a chief's counselor, "What is the old man good for?" he demands. The attendants reply: "The counselor is a very great man in the king's court. He must be a man skilful in language, and whatever advice he gives to the king, the king will give heed to. He can predict the coming of prosperity to the land and to the people. He can tell whether a man, commoner or chief, will become rich or poor." Consulting the old man as to his own future, Lono is advised to take up the art of hoʻopaʻapaʻa. He proves an apt pupil and on his return home entangles all his playmates in argument, to his own great practical advantage. Says the story, "This made the third [320] thing that Lono-from-the-land-of-Kahiki was proficient in up to his death, and he caused no end of trouble for certain chiefs thereby."

Other Hawaiian tales speak more in detail of the requirements of the training for the hoʻopaʻapaʻa. Kaipalaoa, called "the hoʻopaʻapaʻa youngster," goes for instruction to an aunt who lives in Kohala. "She taught him all she knew relating to the profession; the things above and the things below, in the uplands and in the lowlands; the things of day and the things of night; of death and life; of good and evil. She taught him all that she knew, where upon he was classed as an expert." Kuapakaa, son of a banished chief's counsellor, gets his training from his father. The story runs: "After Kuapakaa had grown up to the age when he could talk and think, Pakaʻa said to him : 'I want to teach you the songs relating to your master and also the general knowledge of all things; for it is possible that he will miss me and will come in search of me; if he does, I want you to be ready to meet him.' The course of instruction did not take many days for Kuapakaa was a bright boy and mastered everything in a way to give him a thorough knowledge of the different branches of knowledge." It would appear, then, from these descriptions that education for the wit-contest demanded a thorough objective knowledge of the physical world, with the names, attributes, and history attached to individual objects and the classes to which they belonged, together with the genealogies of chiefs and the names of places and their local peculiarities throughout the group.

The importance of the thorough mastery of his art to the expert in hoʻopaʻapaʻa is shown by the high stakes for which the game is played, which proceed to such extravagant lengths that not only a whole landed possession but even life itself is made to depend upon the outcome. The loser is regularly "cooked in the oven,"²⁰ probably, since cannibalism was not practised in Hawaiʻi, [321] in order the more easily to remove the flesh from the bones, which are then set up in token of victory. In Kuapakaa, the rivals who are conspiring for the hero's death say, "There is always one wager, our bones. If we beat you, you forfeit your life to us, and if you beat us, why, we forfeit ours."²¹ In the story of Lono, although the two chiefs have staked only their landed estates, Lono says to the counsellor whose timely arrival has won him the bet, "If you had not come today, I should have been cooked in the oven already prepared for me."²² When "the hoʻopaʻapaʻa youngster" has beaten the Kauaʻi chief's disputants, "The men were then all killed and cooked in the oven and their bones stripped of flesh."²³

The episodic account of the last contest is treated more elaborately in the story of Kipakailiuli. The king's crier proclaims the contest as follows: "All men are commanded to the chief's house to guess the chief's riddle. If solved, saved from the oven; if not solved, death in the oven. Not a man, woman or child, old or young, shall remain at home except the man who winks not when you stab at his eye with your finger. Whoever remains at home, his house shall be burned to the ground and the chief's wrath shall follow him and his family from parents to children, his kindred even to the most remote, and his friends. So shall punishment be measured out to anyone who remains at home this day!" When the champion presents himself, the chief says, "I have two riddles. If the right answers are given to them, I shall bake in the oven; if not, you will bake. These are the conditions." But the chief's crier has already advised the stranger, as follows: " 'Come and stand before the people and when you see that the oven is hot enough, for I shall attend to the heat, give the answer to the first half. And when you see me lay the stones flat and throw some out to the edge, give the answer to the [322] second half. Then take hold of Kaikipaananea and throw him into the oven.'"²⁴

In both cases in which the hoʻopaʻapaʻa contest is named, the contestant carries a calabash containing articles of which he is to make use in the hoʻopaʻapaʻa contest — articles, that is, by which he can make good an improbable boast or meet any attempt of his host to put him at a disadvantage. In neither case are these objects of a supernatural character. In the story of Kuapakaa, however, it is the possession of the "wind-calabash" containing his grandmother's bones which gives the hero advantage over his rivals. "It was a real calabash, entirely covered over with wicker-work, plaited like a basket, and it was named in honor of Pakaʻa's mother.... This calabash was given the name of Laʻamaomao because during her life-time the winds obeyed her every call and command."²⁵

The legendary woman from underseas, Hinaʻaimalama, carries the moon in her calabash.²⁶ The Rat-man, wishing to go concealed to Hawaiʻi, bids a friend "... get some ie vines and make a basket in the shape of a calabash for me to hide in... and you can say that the basket is for the safe-keeping of your god."²⁷

On the whole, however, the challenger is represented as depending upon his wits rather than upon miracle in stocking his calabash. When Kaipalaoa, "the hoʻopaʻapaʻa youngster," arrives off Kauaʻi, he passes the chief's canoes loaded with fish. Offered a canoe-load, he refuses all but two, which he selects with care; and coming to the bone fence proceeds to set them up in place of the chief's taboo signals, which he tears down as a sign of defiance. The point of the substitution lies in the fact that the fishes' [323] names — "Twisted signal" and "Strong taboo" — are a challenge to competitive rank. There is some preliminary sparring. "The chief invites you to come up here, young bragger," calls the messenger. "The chief invites you to come down here, middle-aged bragger," retorts the boy. On his arrival at the door, the wits declare that he may stay outside. "Very good! then you must stay inside, never go out, rot there!" Again defeated, they invite him to enter, but take up all the floor-covering and throw down water. He good-humoredly confides to his calabash, "Say, you must sit down on the part of the floor that has a covering." Challenged to make his words good, he explains that the lower batton [batten] of the house is called the "bottom covering." The wits then proceed to make their section of the floor suitable for men of rank. They spread down fine grass, then mats from Niʻihau, and finally their handsomest bark-cloth. The calabash now comes into requisition. Puna, in the island of Hawaiʻi, is noted for its fragrant plants. The stranger spreads out sweet grass, a mat woven of richly-perfumed pandanus blossoms, a scented bark-cloth dyed on both sides. When the chief's followers prepare a feast of roast pig and ʻawa drink, he takes out a little wooden pig (probably of a kind used by priests in sacrifice), a bundle of sticks, a number of pebbles, and dramatizes a feast in miniature. When they place singers behind them to accompany their chants, he derides them by setting up a wooden mannikin to make the motions. In this way he successfully prevents his antagonists from putting him to shame at the outset of the debate.

At Lono's arrival at the court of the chief of Oʻahu,²⁸ a number of bets are engaged in between himself and his host, who attempts to catch him at his weakest point. In every case, in spite of the rashness of the venture, Lono outwits his host. The first bet is about a new name-chant which the chief has got from a lady-guest from Kauaʻi. He has bidden each of his retainers to [324] commit a line as she recites the song and has then connected the lines one by one at his leisure until he has committed the whole. Unfortunately for him, the lady has omitted to mention that Lono, having enjoyed her favor for a night, has himself memorized the same chant in a single night, and is fully prepared to meet the chief's challenge. The next four contests take place on a fishing excursion, an art in which Lono is confessedly weak. Here magic saves the day for Lono. I am inclined to think that the story of the shark lured by Lono into sharkless waters; of his cutting up his old counsellor to provide hook, sinker, bait, and line; and of the fish from Puna with a wreath over its head, about which the first three bets concern themselves, are substituted for misunder stood puns, so at variance are they with the realistic spirit of the other contests. In the last bet, which concerns a racing contest back to port, Lono wins against overwhelming odds by slipping in by another route while his antagonist stops his rowers upon their oars to jeer at his expected defeat.²⁹ The final bet concerns the calabash which contains the bones of enemy warriors, each done up in its own bundle. Only a single one of Lono's counsellors can name each bundle, and he is supposed to be in Hawaiʻi. His opponent knows this and ventures the bet. By good luck, the counsellor arrives just in time to save his master the stake, and Lono chants a jeering song at the expense of each dead warrior.

In all these examples, the wit-contest consists in making good a brag, or taking a dare, or answering jibe for jibe, or standing up against quizzing — in any of a number of quite useless competitive activities entered into merely for the fun of the thing, such as are common to any society in their moments of relaxation. The value of the stakes set, the prodigious odds against which the hero engages, these are the careless ways of chiefs; and sympathy for the winner is assured by pitting the adventurer against the arrogant chief who is surrounded by the advantages of his own court. But that which mainly supports the hoʻopaʻapaʻa contestant is his knowledge of words. Any boast may be made good by a successful pun. [325]

For example, in the story of Pikoiakaala, the Rat-man over comes the champion rat-shooter of Oʻahu by wit in words. His antagonist shoots ten rats with a single arrow; he gets ten and a bat. "The bat must not be counted! It is not a rat!" cry the other's adherents. But by quoting an old saying

he claims the victory. Then he brags that he will hit a rat in the midst of a crowd. He shoots a dim-eyed old woman and wins the bet; for "When a baby is born he is called a child; when he grows bigger we call him a youth; when he stops growing he is a full-grown man; when he walks with a cane he is an old man; and when his eyes grow dim he is called blear-eyed rat. Then isn't she a rat?" Next he offers to shoot "a big rat sitting on the rafters," and hits the top batten. "That is not a rat!" "O yes, it is! It is called 'back of a rat,' as one says in house-building, 'Bind the cord to the back of the rat!'"³⁰

Hawaiian hero-tales contain instances of such witty retorts. Certain games cultivate the practice of wrapping a reproach or an insult under a form of words much like the old European lampoon ing by means of a "ballad." The hula songs especially preserve this art.³¹ But the formal riddling contest is described in full only in the story of Kaipalaoa.

The contest contains eighteen numbers. A list of their subjects may make the nature of the competition clearer:

The wits about the chief voice the challenge in formal terms of insult, accompanied by an invocation to the god. They say:

The boy takes up the word quickly:

Several different kinds of word-plays are involved in the riddling, but the trick always consists in finding another case like the one or more described in the challenge. Some of the tests are not what we would call "riddles" at all; they are merely lists of things to which the test is to add another. A second sort of test depends upon a mere change in the place-name, either with or without a punning significance. Place-names enter largely into all these tests. Eight out of the eighteen numbers involve their knowledge. The successful combatant must therefore be a well-traveled man, since not only the place itself but its particular character and associations enter into the competition. In the case of actual riddles — the "animal with its bones outside," the "rich round relish," the "bird with drooping wings," the [327] "bat created long ago by Hina" — in which simple objects are wrapped up in metaphorical images, the point of the contest does not seem to lie in guessing the riddle, the answers to which — the crab, the candle-nut, the dragon-fly, a bat-shaped mountain — are contained in the challenge. It is for the opponent to compose a similar riddle which will parallel the first as exactly as possible and present an equally striking analogy.³² Sometimes the test is not metaphorical; an object may have a characteristic so unique that it is hard to match it. Of such sort is the riddle of the kaunaʻoa^m vine which

but the lad sees a charming analogy in the spider-web. The possible changes vary from the slight alteration involved in

which the lad answers with

to the figure of the animal-shaped mountain

matched by

Of the eighteen numbers of the contest, only five take any such liberties as the last with the phrasing, which is usually exactly reproduced with only such slight alteration as is necessary to turn the figure. Such performances require a very ready memory, as well as an active wit. The addition of a metaphor to a literal description, as in the riddle quoted above, or the introduction of a pun, scores for the contestant. Eight out of the eighteen [328] numbers contain a play on words, and in five cases the pun is introduced in the reply. The most intricate example of this is the enumeration of "things of value" in the canoe-shed and in the calabash. The challenge is to add anything of equal value to the three things named in the canoe-shed — the canoe itself, the out-rigger, and the lashing-beam. By punning upon other uses of the three words, the boy proves that exactly these three things are "things of value in a calabash."

The riddles are for the most part proposed as an unrelated series, but the last three are linked together by a play upon the words employed by the last speaker. The conclusion is left unfinished by Fornander, who says, "The contest continued until the boy won out at the word 'joint' (ki)." Curiously enough, the end is recovered, as I think, in a story of a riddling contest from Puna collected recently in Honolulu and sent me by Miss Laura Green.³³ As it is unpublished, with her permission I give it in full.

If we compare this modern folk-tale with the two older Fornander versions contained in Kipakailiuli and in Kaipalaoa, for whose common source we have already argued, we shall find exactly those variations which we should expect to find in a later age. Both contestants belong to Puna, the link having been forgotten which sent heroes in more ancient times on adventures between the islands of Kauaʻi and the district of Puna on Hawaiʻi. There is no mention of the "oven," and, as in the episodic story, it is the chief himself rather than his disputers who suffers death. Like the episodic version, too, the riddle is not guessed but won from an old servant of the chief. Here it is by luck ; in the earlier version the hero sets about the task of winning the man's confidence by kind treatment. Both lack the motive of blood-revenge which gives moral force to the more elaborate account of the [330] hoʻopaʻapaʻa contest in Kaipalaoa and both lack the actual display of wit in repartee which belongs to the finished tale. But Miss Green's version contributes just that turn to the conclusion which is missing in the elaborated tale dictated to Judge Fornander. Putting the two together, the three linked riddles run as follows. The wits have named thirteen islands of the group and challenge the hero to name another. He thinks of Moku-ola, Isle-of-life, an islet off the coast of Hilo. Catching up the word "life" (ola) they rejoin

He answers with a pun upon the word moku, which as a verb signifies "to cut," and says,

The answer is an enumeration of the "joints" of the body, as in Miss Green's version, and the concluding challenge must be that of the "finger-nails" (mi-ki-ʻao) according to her informant. In the Fornander version, the test depends upon adding another "joint"; in Miss Green's version, it is the contestant who is challenged to name the "joints" of the body.

A study of the practise of the hoʻopaʻapaʻa in Hawaiʻi and especially of the wit in riddling which it develops, suggests that the riddling of today is a much simpler and more childish matter than in those days when it was practised by chiefs or employed by the specially gifted to acquire fortune. Evidently much is yet to be learned about the rules of the genuine old Hawaiian riddles, for examples of which we should no doubt turn to the old chants and hula songs of Hawaiʻi.

It is likely that puzzling metaphor and pun became the fashion during a special period of Hawaiian history — that period which was dominated by the brilliant group of traditional island chiefs who appear in this set of stories and which is said to represent the high water mark of Hawaiian intellectual energy.³⁵ Its taste dominated later art. The simplicity of the archaic style was probably [331] vitiated by the riddling tendency, and the result is an incoherent elaboration of riddles which even in the noblest of the later chants of Hawaiʻi remain unintelligible to the Hawaiians themselves. Scandinavian and Irish native art met the same fate, and probably through a similar domination of wit over the imagination among an aristocratic circle closed to the uninitiated.

The answer is in both cases "a house." In the first riddle, "the house is plaited all around from top to bottom (with thatch) leaving an opening, the door"; in the second, "the sticks (of the house) are made to stand, the battens are laid down, and the grass and cords are folded."