Apart from the coercive power which is attributed to the pronouncing of names, there is an analogous belief in the utterance of words or phrases. Those =Words of Power= have been classed by Mr. Clodd (11, 194) as: (1) Creative Words; (2) Mantrams and their kin; (3) Passwords; (4) Spells or Invocations for conjuring up the spirit of the dead, or for exorcising demons, or for removing spells on the living; and (5) Cure-charms in formulæ or magic words. Mr. Clodd points out that these classes overlap and intermingle. Even among such backward people as the Australians, certain of the medicine-men or sorcerers were bards who devoted their poetic faculties to the purposes of enchantment, such as the Bunjil-yenjin of the Kurnai, whose peculiar branch of magic was composing and singing potent love charms and the arrangement of marriages by elopement spells (35, 356, 274). In few countries was the spoken word more effective than in ancient Ireland; a sorcerer, whether a druid or not, would stand on one foot, with one arm outstretched and with one eye shut, and chant an incantation in a loud voice (37, i. 240). The grand weapon of the Irish poets by which they enforced their demands was the _satire_. A poet could compose a satire that would blight crops, dry up milch-cows, and raise an ulcerous blister on the face. A story is told (37, i. 454) of Senchán Torpest, chief poet of Ireland, who lived in the seventh century, that once when his dinner was eaten in his absence by rats, he muttered a satire beginning, ‘Rats, though sharp their snouts, are not powerful in battle,’ which killed ten of them on the spot. Shakespeare, and other Elizabethan writers, often refer to the belief that Irish bards could rhyme rats to death. The Irish =geis= or =geas= [pronounced gesh or gass], plural _geasa_ [gassa], was the exact equivalent of an ordinary =tabu=, but people sometimes put an injunction on a person in some such form as ‘I place you under heavy _geasa_, which no true champion will break through, to do so and so.’ In this manner, the witch-lady forces Finn to search for the ring she had dropped into the lake; and Marbhan put the arch-poet Senchán Torpest under _geasa_ to obtain a copy of a lost story. When the request was reasonable or just the abjured person could not refuse without loss of honour and reputation and probably in early days personal harm would accrue if the _geasa_ were disregarded. The power of the _geis_ was so strong that when Grania put Diarmuid under _geasa_ of danger and destruction to elope with her, he was advised by his friends against his will to agree: Oisin said, ‘You are not guilty if the bonds were laid on you,’ and Osgar said, ‘It is a pitiful man that would break his bonds’ (25, 347, 8).