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 water-side, 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 Tu-i-rawea, This is the _Tiri_ of Uenuku. Where lies your fault? Was eating a _kutu_ your fault? Was sitting on _tapu_ ground your fault? Unravel the tangle, Unravel, untie. Take away the fault from the head Of the _Atua_ who afflicts this man. Take away the disease, And the _mana_ of the curser. Turn your _mana_ against your _tohunga_, And your _whaiwhaia_.²⁷ Give me the curse To make as cooked food. Your _Atua_ desecrated, Your _tapu_, your curse, Your sacred-place-dwelling _Atua_, Your house-dwelling _Atua_, Give me to cook for food. Your _tapu_ is desecrated by me. The rays of the sun, The brave of the world, The _mana_, give me. Let your _Atua_, and your _tapu_ Be food for me to eat. Let the head of the curser Be baked in the oven, Served up for food for me Dead, and gone to Night. ²⁷ A _karakia_ so called. The latter part of this _karakia_ is a curse directed against some _tohunga_ supposed to have caused the disease by his art of _makutu_. _Makutu_ was the weapon of the weak, who had no other mode of obtaining redress. There is no doubt but that it exercised a restraining influence, in a society where no law but that of force generally prevailed, as a check to theft and unjust dealing generally; for there is among the _Maori_ a firm belief in and dread of its power. This is very evident from the following account given by one of themselves of the mode employed to detect and punish a petty theft.