Menehune
In Native Hawaiian folklore, the Menehune are a race of small, powerfully built forest-dwelling people famed for completing enormous feats of construction in a single night.
At a glance
- Tradition
- Native Hawaiian folklore
- Region
- Hawaii (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Track-Leavers
Near this figure
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Behaviour
- Shy elusive avoids humans
why
In some tellings they are covered in hair and are shy of outsiders, preferring to work under cover of darkness and vanishing into the forest before dawn.
- Aids household or construction tasks for the respectful
why
Their defining power is prodigious, cooperative building: legend holds that a Menehune work party could raise a substantial structure, such as a fishpond or heiau wall, in a single night, provided the work was finished before daybreak and provided the humans who commissioned it did not watch them at their labor.
- Exposure of secret nature breaks power
why
In some tellings, failure to complete a task by sunrise meant the Menehune would abandon the work unfinished, and being seen or spied upon while working could cause them to flee or curse the onlooker.
Offensive powers
- Superhuman strength
why
Accounts describe the Menehune as short in stature but stocky and immensely strong, often said to stand no taller than two or three feet, with the build of skilled laborers rather than the frail proportions sometimes given to little people in other traditions.
Utility powers
- Supernatural construction speed
why
Their defining power is prodigious, cooperative building: legend holds that a Menehune work party could raise a substantial structure, such as a fishpond or heiau wall, in a single night, provided the work was finished before daybreak and provided the humans who commissioned it did not watch them at their labor.
Curses
- Curse infliction
why
In some tellings, failure to complete a task by sunrise meant the Menehune would abandon the work unfinished, and being seen or spied upon while working could cause them to flee or curse the onlooker.