, would kill her. That happened in the afternoon,
and next day by twelve o'clock she was dead." For us the power of the
taboo does not exist; for the Maori, who implicitly believes in it, it
is a very potent reality, but this power of the taboo resides not in
external objects but in his own mind.

(1) Professor J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L.: _Psyche's Task_ (1909), p. 7.

Dr HADDON(2) quotes a similar but still more remarkable story of a young
Congo negro which very strikingly shows the power of the imagination.
The young negro, "being on a journey, lodged at a friend's house; the
latter got a wild hen for his breakfast, and the young man asked if it
were a wild hen. His host answered 'No.' Then he fell on heartily, and
afterwards proceeded on his journey. After four years these two met
together again, and his old friend asked him 'if he would eat a wild
hen,' to which he answered that it was tabooed to him. Hereat the host
began immediately to laugh, inquiring of him, 'What made him refuse it
now, when he had eaten one at his table about four years ago?' At the
hearing of this the negro immediately fell a-trembling, and suffered
himself to be so far possessed with the effects of imagination that he
died in less than twenty-four hours after."

(2) ALFRED C. HADDON, SC.D., F.R.S.: _Magic and Fetishism_ (1906), p.
56.

There are, of course, many stories about amulets, _etc_., which cannot
be thus explained. For example, ELIHU RICH gives the following:--

"In 1568, we are told (Transl. of Salverte, p. 196) that the Prince of
Orange condemned a Spanish prisoner to be shot at Juliers. The soldiers
tied him to a tree and fired, but he was invulnerable. They then
stripped him to see what armour he wore, but they found only an amulet
bearing the figure of a lamb (the _Agnus Dei_, we presume). This was
taken from him, and he was then killed by the first shot. De Baros
relates that the Portuguese in like manner vainly attempted to destroy
a Malay, so long as he wore a bracelet containing a bone set in gold,
which rendered him proof against their swords. A similar marvel is
related in the travels of the veracious Marco Polo. 'In an attempt of
Kublai Khan to make a conquest of the island of Zipangu, a jealousy
arose between the two commanders of the expedition, which led to an
order for putting the whole garrison to the sword. In obedience to this
order, the heads of all were cut off excepting of eight persons, who
by the effic