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Updated: June 2, 2025
The boot-white called out, "Shine!" and the word, unpronounceable by the native, entered a himene as tina. Within a week he had his Tahitian consort doing the shining most of the time while he loafed in the Paris saloon. He lived at the Annexe, and told me that he was not really a boot-cleaner, but was going around the world on a wager of twenty thousand dollars, "without a cent."
One easily guessed the meaning of the word himene. The Polynesians' first singing was the hymns of the missionaries, and these they termed himenes; so that any song is a himene, and there is no other word for vocal music in common use.
Walking back alone through a by-path, I saw the old folks sitting on their verandas and the younger at dalliance in the many groves. Voices of girls called me: "Haere me ne!" "Come to us!" "Hoere mai u nei ite po ia u nei!" The Himene tatou Arearea of our Moorea expedition came from many windows, the accordions sweet and low, and the subdued chant in sympathy with the mellow hour.
The ideal mode of travel in Tahiti in the cool of the day would be a donkey, a slow, patient beast, who might himself take an interest in the scenery, or at least the shrubbery. But the white must ever go at top speed, and we dashed through the streets of Papeete, the accordions playing "Revive us again!" the "Himene Tatou Arearea," and other tunes, and we singing, "Hallelujah!
"This is the rough of it," he said. "To write poetry here is difficult. When I was at Heidelberg and Paris I often spent nights writing sonnets. That merely tells the sense of the himene, but cannot convey the joy or sorrow of it. Well, let's sink dull care fifty fathoms deep! Look at those band-boys!
Some born here have never been away, and some have spent a few short months in visits to the homeland. Some have brown mothers, half-islanders; yet if they learn the tripping tongue of their French progenitor and European manners, they think of France as their ultimate goal, of Paris their playground, and the "Marseillaise" their himene par excellence.
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