under the compulsion of a hostile
sorcerer or magician. In a Maori legend called _The curse of Manaia_ we
read that "the priests next dug a long pit, termed the pit of wrath,
into which by their enchantments they might bring the spirits of their
enemies, and hang them and destroy them there; and when they had dug the
pit, muttering the necessary incantations, they took large shells in
their hands to scrape the spirits of their enemies into the pit with,
whilst they muttered enchantments; and when they had done this, they
scraped the earth into the pit again to cover them up, and beat down the
earth with their hands, and crossed the pit with enchanted cloths, and
wove baskets of flax-leaves to hold the spirits of the foes which they
had thus destroyed, and each of these acts they accompanied with the
proper spells."[38]

[38] Sir George Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_ (London, 1855), pp.
168 _sq._

This mode of undoing an enemy by extracting and killing his soul was not
with the Maoris a mere legendary fiction; it was practised in real life
by their wizards. For we are told that when a priest desired to slay a
person by witchcraft, he would often dig a hole in the ground, and
standing over it with a cord in his hand would let one end of the cord
hang down into the hole. He then recited an incantation which compelled
the soul of the doomed man to swarm down the cord into the pit,
whereupon another potent spell chanted by the magician speedily put an
end to the poor soul for good and all.[39]

[39] Elsdon Best, "Spiritual Concepts of the Maori," _Journal of
the Polynesian Society_, vol. ix. no. 4 (December 1900), p. 187.

It seems obvious that spells of this sort may be used with great
advantage in war, for if you can only contrive to kill the souls of your
foes, their mere bodies will probably give you little or no trouble. Nor
did this practical application of the magic art escape the sagacity of
the Maoris. When they marched to attack an enemy's stronghold, it was an
ancient custom to halt and kindle a fire, over which the priest recited
certain spells to cause the souls of his adversaries to be drawn into
the fire and there to perish miserably in the flames. In theory the idea
was admirable, but unfortunately it did not always work out in
practice. For magic is a game at which two can play, and it sometimes
happened that the spells of the besieged proved more powerful than those
of the besiegers and en