confined to the karakia of a tohunga or wise man. One or two examples of such cases will be sufficient to explain this as well as to show the in-rooted superstition of the Maori.
When anyone becomes porangi or insane, as not unfrequently happens, he is taken to a tohunga, who first makes an examination as to the cause of the disease. He and the sick man then go to the waterside, and the tohunga, stripping off his own clothes, takes in his hand an obsidian flint. First he cuts a lock of hair from the left side of the sick man's head, and afterwards a lock of hair from the top of his head. The obsidian flint is then placed on the ground, and upon it the lock of hair which had been cut from the left side of the head. The lock of hair cut from the top of the head is held aloft in the left hand of the tohunga, while in his right hand he holds a common stone, which is also raised aloft, while the following karakia is being repeated by him.
Tu, divide, Tu, split,
This is the waiapu flint.
Now about to cry aloud
To the Moon of ill-omen.
Then the tohunga breathes on the flint, and smashes it with the stone held in his right hand. After this he selects a shoot of the plant toetoe, and pulls it up, and then fastens to it both the locks of hair. Then diving in the river, he lets go the toetoe and locks of hair, and when they float on the surface of the water, he commences his great karakia thus—
This is the Tiri of Uenuku.
