Goldie. — Maori Medical Lore. 37 



literal comparison, in which the person's bones are likened to a 

 fork, or the skull to a drinking-cup, as " To upoko ho taku ipu 

 wai " (Your head is the calabash from which I drink) ; " Ko taku 

 tirou kai o whena " (My food-fork is your bones). There is also a 

 lower degree, tapatapa, which is by calling the name of any animal 

 or thing after a person. To remove the bewitching effect of 

 these curses elaborate ceremonies have to be performed by the 

 priest, who repeats numerous incantations and counter-charms : 

 these ceremonies continue in some cases for three days. They 

 are fully discussed in another part of this paper. 



(b.) Bites and Ceremonies. 



The Maoris induced insanity by means of sorcery, sometimes 



in the spirit of revenge, as when a lover resorted to that form of 



black magic called whaka-tihaha, in order to drive mad and kill 



the woman who had repelled his amorous advances. The rotu 



is a potent spell to throw a person into a magic sleep, prior to a 



murderous attack perhaps, and commences thus : ' tnata e 



tiro mai, nana tu whakarehua, tu whakamoea, e moe!" which 



may be translated thus : — 



eyes that behold, 

 Be thou closed in sleep, 

 Be thou fast in sleep, sleep. 



Much more potent, however, than the rotu was the deadly 

 tipi-whaka-moe, or sleep-causing stroke, which was the sudden 

 letting fly a mystic power by the wizard, resulting in the sudden 

 death of his victim. Mata-rere-puku is the name of a species 

 of witchcraft so called because the charm was effected by the tip 

 (matamata) of the tongue of the sorcerer secretly (puku) applied. 

 Umu pongipongi (umu = oven, ceremony ?) was some form, cere- 

 mony, and karakia to bewitch. Its exact nature is not known. 



The Rua-iti Rite (rua, a pit, a grave ; iti, small). — When a 

 priest wished to slay a person by symbolic magic a commonly 

 used form was that known as rua-iti. The sorcerer secretly 

 digs a small hole in the ground and places in it, or moulds at the 

 bottom of the pit, a mound of earth in the form of the human 

 body. Taking a cord in his hand, and standing over the hole, he 

 allows one end of the cord to hang down in the hole. He then 

 repeats potent incantations to cause the wairua (dream-ghost) of 

 the doomed person to descend by way of the cord into the hole, 

 where it is destroyed by means of another powerful karakia 

 known as whakaumu. In some cases the cord seems to have 

 been dispensed with, and the wairua is then seen to enter the hole 

 in the form of a fly (rango), such fly being the ahua (semblance) 

 or aria (form of incarnation) of the spirit of the victim. Or the 

 ahua in other cases appeared over the pit as a small flame or 

 light, a will-o'-the-wisp, which was promptly cursed, and its 



