Goldik. — Maori Medical Lore. 73 



In olden times charms were repeated in order to cure tooth- 

 ache, as also others to cause children's teeth to grow. A favourite 

 ■charm was this : — 



He tuna, he tara 



Pu-ano-ano, pu-are-are. 



Mau e kai i te upoko 



taua tara-tu. 



Which, being translated, is : — 



An eel, a spiny back, 



True indeed, indeed : true in sooth, in sooth. 



You must eat the head 



Of said spiny back. 



Scotch and Welsh peasants attribute toothache to the pre- 

 sence of a worm, and, like the Maoris, sometimes endeavour 

 to exorcise it by muttered charm or incantation. 



Insanity. 



General. 



Maori philosophers regard the body and the mind as separate 

 •entities. The spirit, or what we regard as the soul, is with them 

 not a single but a compound intangible and invisible spiritual 

 ■essence. We have already referred to the hau and the ivairua, \ 



the vital essence and the dream-ghost, as component parts of 

 man's soul, and it is interesting to note here that the Maori 

 metaphysician locates intellectuality in the hau, and not, as we 

 do, in the cerebrum, and regards the wairua as the source of all 

 moral ideas, prompting a person to perform good or evil actions. 

 These savages, although so advanced in the region of abstract 

 •conception, had not progressed so far as to be able to attribute 

 disease to derangement of organic function ; and insanity was not 

 .regarded by them as the result of any morbid condition of the 

 body or spirit : mental aberration was due to the subtle entrance 

 of some hostile spirit— the lunatic was the victim of sorcery or 

 the plavthing of an evil atua. This messenger from the gods, 

 ■or ancestral ghost, or malignant atua, is heard speaking during 

 the mutterings and ravings of the lunatic ; it is this atua which 

 throws him to the ground, jerks and writhes him in convulsions, 

 makes him leap upon the bystanders with a giant's strength 

 and a wild beast's ferocity — impels him, with distorted face and 

 irantic gesture, and peculiar unnatural voice, to pour forth wild 

 incoherent raving, and even in his fury to rush and jump head- 

 Jong over a cliff into the sea. 



All persons who were the subjects of " demoniacal possession " 

 did not behave in this violent manner. For instance, a kaupapa, 

 or person who is occasionally visited by an ancestral spirit, and 

 -who is its medium of communication with the living, might, 

 ■on the arrival of his familiar spirit, merely commence to tremble 



