To begin with, it was the first, and is still the only, scholarly work which charts a pathway through the hundreds of books and articles, many of them obscure and scarce, and through the little-known manuscripts that record the orally transmitted myths, legends, traditions, folktales, and romances of the Hawaiian people. Beckwith herself saw it as a ''guide to the native mythology of Hawaii" (p. xxxi), and by mythology she meant "the whole range of story-telling" (p. 2).

Secondly, from the vantage point of Hawaiian oral narrative the book directs the reader into similar material from peoples elsewhere in Polynesia who are closely related to the Hawaiians, reminding him of relevant narratives from areas west of Polynesia and occasionally even east of Hawaii. The southern Pacific comparison Beckwith offers as "an important link in tracing routes of intercourse during the period of migration of related Polynesian groups" (p. 5). However, except to summarize immediately the hypothesis current in 1940 and to make her detailed comparisons throughout the book, she is unconcerned with migration theory as such. Consequently, under the silent weight of testimony, the reader envisages for himself the Pacific being criss-crossed every which way by sailing families who passed on their lore wherever they found listeners.” -- INTRODUCTION