Idylls of the South Seas / / William S. Stone.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Hawaii Press Archive eBook-Package Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Stone, William S.,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2021]; ©1970
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (164 p.)

Tetua, the old bard of Tahiti, holds within his mind and heart a wealth of tales of a bygone age, a time when his island home had not yet felt the hurried pace of the white man upon its shores. Stone first used Tetua as narrator of Polynesian legends in THE SHIP OF FLAME. The stories he tells, handed down through the generations by word of mouth, are to him as familiar and comforting as old friends.The stories in this volume are not literal translations of ancient songs and myths, but are rather presented, as the author points out in his preface, “in such a way that they might have living reality for a reader who has little or perhaps no personal familiarity either with Polynesian peoples or with Polynesian islands.” as Tetua weaves the spell of Tahiti, we come to know “the youths and maidens and men and women not as so many strange means but as real human beings.”

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Of Tetua the Teller of Tales -- The Eighth Great Quest of Maui -- The Sacred Blue Shark of Taunoa -- Nona-of-the-Long-Teeth -- Tafai -- The Demon Tree of Burning-Hawaii -- Queen Putu and theWhales of Nuku Hiva -- Terii-of-the-Thousand-Eyes -- The Cloud Sisters of Lower-Havaiki -- The Dragons of Dark River -- In Parting I