Goldie. — Maori Medical Lore. 79 



over the Sandwich Islands in 1807. great multitudes succumbed. 

 The name okuu was given to the epidemic because the people 

 okuu wale aku no i ka uhane — i.e., dismissed freely their souls 

 and died. 



As illustrations of the despondent state of mind into which 

 the Maori often fell when seized with what he believed to be an 

 incurable disease, sent by the gods in punishment for sin, we may 

 cite the following laments : — 



Alas, thou canst not find a remedy, 



The gods have otherwise decreed ; Whiro [a god] by his 



Axe has all my bones disjointed, and I am 



Torn asunder as a branch snapt from its 



Parent stem by some rude blast, ami fal'ing 



With a crash is rent in pieces. 



I did it ; I brought this death 

 Upon myself in meddling with the sacred things 

 Which e'er displease the gods : and now 

 As in a desert I'm bereft of every succour. 

 Emaciated and folorn, wracked with 

 Pain of body and distress of mind. I turn me 

 Round to die. 



Such was the song of the daughter of Kikohiko, chief of the 

 tribe Ngatiwhatua, of Kaipara. In another lament by a chief- 

 tainess, who imagined that she was also a helpless victim of evil 

 demons, we find these lines : — 



Ah, this animal Mokoroa has 

 Thrust his teeth into my flesh, and 

 Grasped my body with his numerous 

 Teeth, and thus I am being eaten up. 

 The pain that wracks my body is like 

 An army passing on. each wounding 

 As he passes. 



Aye, there's little 

 Hope of my recovery; I'm hastening to the dust. 

 To appease the gods, who haunt my spirit hence. 



The fatalistic frame of mind into which these superstitious 

 young women drifted would render them unfit subjects for 

 medicinal treatment, and would place them even beyond the 

 power of the most potent karakia and rites of the tribal sorcerers. 

 Superadded to their organic dis3ase was the condition of rapidly 

 fatal melancholia, or awhireinga, the latter term signifying " to 

 embrace or draw near to the region of spirits, or, to court death." 



Mr. C. J. Du Ve* relates that " in the year 1860 a Maneroo 

 (Australian) black died in his service. The day before he 

 died, having been ill some time, he said that in the night his 

 father, his father's friend, and a female spirit he could not recog- 

 nis3 had come to him and said that he would die next day, and 

 that they would wait for him." Mr. Fison, who prints this tale 



* A. Lang, " Myth, Ritual, and Religion." vol. i., p. 106. 



