Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/225

.] often the same men who cause them, the mana derived from spirits and ghosts being in both cases the agent employed; but it often happens that the darker secrets of the magic art are possessed and practised only by those whose power lies in doing harm, and who are resorted to when it is desired to bring evil upon an enemy. Their secrets, like others connected with mana, are passed down from one generation to another, and may be bought. The most common working of this malignant witchcraft is that, so common among savages, in which a fragment of food, bit of hair or nail, or anything closely connected with the person to be injured, is the medium through which the power of the ghost or spirit is brought to bear. Some relic such as a bone of the dead person whose ghost is set to work is, if not necessary, very desirable for bringing his power into the charm; and a stone may have its mana for doing mischief. What is needed is the bringing together of the man who is to be injured and the spirit or ghost who is to injure him; this can be done when something which pertains to the man's person can be used, such as a hair, a nail, a leaf with which he has wiped the perspiration from his face, and with equal effect when a fragment of the food which has passed into the man forms the link of union. Hence in Florida when a scrap from a man's meal could be secreted and thrown into the vunuha haunted by the tindalo ghost, the man would certainly be ill; and in the New Hebrides when the mae snake carried away a fragment of food into the place sacred to a spirit, the man who had eaten of the food would sicken as the fragment decayed. It was for this reason a constant care to prevent anything that might be used in witchcraft from falling into the hands of ill-wishers; it was the regular practice to hide hair and nail-parings, and to give the remains of food most carefully to the pigs. In the Banks' Islands the fragment of food, or