Title: Menehune

General Information about Item:

• Genre and sub genre: Customary and Verbal folklore: Superstition and legend
• Language: Hawaiian/English
• Country: USA

Informant Data:

• Collected from: Marlo Mundon ’20 from the Big Island of Hawaii in 2009 from peers

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: Hawaii modern lore includes exaggerated tales that often are told to children about the mischievous people. They are credited with unexplained constructions or chaos.
• Cultural Context: The Menehune were small people, not necessarily supernatural in nature but also not totally human. They lived in the forest and were master craftsmen and sometimes mischievous in nature.

Item:

• They would build great structures like heiau (temples), fish ponds, roads, canoes, and houses overnight. They would only work at night so as not to be seen and would destroy or abandon their work if someone snuck out at night to try to see them work. They could be sought out and commissioned to do these great feats of construction and engineering, but only on their terms and if they were not honored, they would mess up the construction or mess with the people who violated their rules. 

Collector: Michael McGovern and Marlo Mundon