Your voice, O, Love, calls to us.
O Tahitian children,
Love to you!
Let us all drink beer,
And wet our throats!
And wet them again
To you, Tahitian Children!


The bandsmen were probably all related to Llewellyn, or at least
they were of his mother's clan. His own son and nephew by unmarried
mothers were among them; so that they were of our party, and yet on a
different footing. They were our guests, we paying them nothing, but
they not paying their scot. They did not mingle with us intimately,
although probably all the whites except myself knew them well, and
at times were guests at their houses outside Papeete.

The air to which the himene was sung eluded me for long. It was,
"Oh, You Beautiful Doll!" They had changed the tune, so that I had
not recognized it. The Tahitians have curious variations of European
and American airs, of which they adapt many, carrying the thread of
them, but differentiating enough to cause the hearer curiously mixed
emotions. It was as if one heard a familiar voice, and, advancing to
grasp a friendly hand, found oneself facing a stranger.

None of these island peoples originally had any music save
monotones. In fact, in Hawaii, after the missionaries, Kappelmeister
Berger, who came fifty years ago from Germany to Honolulu,
was largely the maker of the songs we know now as distinctively
Hawaiian. He fitted German airs to Hawaiian words, composed music on