Ep. 149 - How Maui Fished for an Island

Maui, the unwanted, the child of ridicule, was the one who put the barb on the fishhook and the hunting spear. Though famous as hunters and fishermen, Maui’s four brothers often lost their game because weapons at that time were without barbs. Their arrows sped swift as the wind through the lehua forests, but the little apapane with the wounded wing always escaped. Their shining hooks of pearl went down into the depths of coral grottoes, but the ulua laughed as they pulled away from the hook without a barb. But even when Maui’s barbed hook enabled the four brothers to cover the bottom of their canoe with the king fish of the sea, they still laughed at Maui, whom they said could never catch anything, even so small as a mullet in a chief’s fish pond.

Maui, the unwanted, the child of ridicule, was the one who put the barb on the fishhook and the hunting spear. Though famous as hunters and fishermen, Maui’s four brothers often lost their game because weapons at that time were without barbs.

Their arrows sped swift as the wind through the lehua forests, but the little apapane with the wounded wing always escaped.

Their shining hooks of pearl went down into the depths of coral grottoes, but the ulua laughed as they pulled away from the hook without a barb.

But even when Maui’s barbed hook enabled the four brothers to cover the bottom of their canoe with the king fish of the sea, they still laughed at Maui, whom they said could never catch anything, even so small as a mullet in a chief’s fish pond.