Note 420 — XXXI.—THE HULA MANÓ
Reading edition
Footnote 420: (return)
Verses 8 and 9 are from an old proverb which the Hawaiians put into the following quatrain:
A pua ka wiliwili, A nanahu ka manó; A pua ka wahine u’i, A nanahu ke kanawai.
When flowers the wiliwili, Then bites the shark; When flowers a young woman. Then bites the law.
The people came to take this old saw seriously and literally, and during the season when the wiliwili (Erythrina monosperma) was clothed in its splendid tufts of brick-red, mothers kept their children from swimming into the deep sea by setting before them the terrors of the shark.