While watching the monster with amazement, a woman approached, and to the questions of the prince replied,…
- Date of account
- Published 1888
- Source
- The Legends and Myths of Hawaii: The fables and folk-lore of a strange people
- Reference
- The Legends and Myths of Hawaii: The fables and folk-lore of a strange people · selected passage 33
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
While watching the monster with amazement, a woman approached, and to the questions of the prince replied, between wails of anguish, that the great bird--the Pueoalii, as she called it--had just killed her only child in front of her hut, with a stab to the heart resembling the cut of a knife
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyWhile watching the monster with amazement, a woman approached, and to the questions of the prince replied, between wails of anguish, that the great bird--the Pueoalii, as she called it--had just killed her only child in front of her hut, with a stab to the heart resembling the cut of a knife. She hurriedly gave the additional information that for many years past the same bird had at intervals visited different districts of the island, killing children, pigs and fowls, and that the priests had declared it to be a pueo, or owl, sacred to the gods, and which could not, therefore, be molested with safety, even if harm to it were possible from human hands.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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