CHAPTER V

MORE ABOUT THE MEDICINE MEN AND LEECHCRAFT

The wirreenuns sometimes hold meetings which they allow non-professionals to attend. At these the spirits of the dead speak through the medium of those they liked best on earth, and whose bodies their spirits now animate. These spirits are known as Yowee, the equivalent of our soul, which never leave the body of the living, growing as it grows, and when it dies take judgment for it, and can at will assume its perishable shape unless reincarnated in another form. So you see each person has at least three spirits, and some four, as follows: his Yowee, soul equivalent; his Doowee, a dream spirit; his Mulloowil, a shadow spirit; and may be his Yunbeai, or animal spirit.

Sometimes one person is so good a medium as to have the spirits of almost any one amongst the dead people speak through him or her, in the whistling spirit voice.

I think it is very clever of these mediums to have decided that spirits all have one sort of voice.

At these meetings there would be great rivalry among the wirreenuns. The one who could produce the most magical stones would be supposed to be the most powerful. The strength of the stones in them, whether swallowed or rubbed in through their heads, adds its strength to theirs, for these stones are living spirits, as it were, breathing and growing in their fleshly cases, the owner having the power to produce them at any time. The manifestation of such power is sometimes, at one of these trials of magic, a small shower of pebbles as seeming to fall from the heads and mouths of the rivals, and should by chance any one steal any of these as they fall, the power of the original possessor would be lessened. The dying bequeath these stones, their most precious possessions, to the living wirreenun most nearly related to them.

The wirreenun's health and power not only depend upon his crystals and yunbeai, but also on his Minggah; should an accident happen to that, unless he has another, he will die—in any case, he will sicken. Many of the legends deal with the magic of these spirit-animated trees.

They are places of refuge in time of danger; no one save the wirreenun, whose spirit-tree it was, would dare to touch a refugee at a Minggah; and should the sanctuary be a Goomarh, or spirit-stone, not even a wirreenun would dare to interfere, so that it is a perfectly safe sanctuary from humanly dealt evil. But a refugee at a Minggah or Goomarh runs a great risk of incurring the wrath of the spirits, for Minggah are taboo to all but their own wirreenun.

There was a Minggah, a great gaunt Coolabah, near our river garden. Some gilahs build in it every year, but nothing would induce the most avaricious of black bird-collectors to get the young ones from there.

A wirreenun's boondoorr, or dillee bag, holds a queer collection: several sizes of gooweeras, of both bone and wood, poison-stones, bones, gubberahs (sacred stones), perhaps a dillee—the biggest, most magical stone used for crystal-gazing, the spirit out of which is said to go to the person of whom you want to hear, wherever he is, to see what he is doing, and then show you the person in the crystal. A dinahgurrerhlowah, or moolee, death-dealing stone, which is said to knock a person insensible, or strike him dead as lightning would by an instantaneous flash.

To these are added in this miscellaneous collection medicinal herbs, nose-bones to put through the cartilage of his nose when going to a strange camp, so that he will not smell strangers easily. The blacks say the smell of white people makes them sick; we in our arrogance had thought it the other way on.

Swansdown, shells, and woven strands of opossum's hair are valuable, and guarded as such in the boondoorr, which is sometimes kept for safety in the wirreenun's Minggah.

Having dealt with the supernatural part of a wirreenun's training, which argues cunning in him and credulity in others, I must get to his more natural remedies.

Snakebite they cure by sucking the wound and cauterising it with a firestick. They say they suck out the young snakes which have been injected into the bitten person.

For headaches or pains which do not yield to the vegetable medicine, the wirreenuns tie a piece of opossum's hair string round the sore place, take one end in their mouths, and pull it round and round until it draws blood along the cord. For rheumatic pains in the head or in the small of the back and loins they often bind the places affected with coils of opossum hair cord, as people do sometimes with red knitting-silk.

The blacks have many herbal medicines, infusions of various barks, which they drink or wash themselves with, as the case may be.

Various leaves they grind on their dayoorl-stones, rubbing themselves with the pulp. Steam baths they make of pennyroyal, eucalyptus, pine, and others.

The bleeding of wounds they stanch with the down of birds.

For irritations of the skin they heat dwarf saltbush twigs and put the hot ends on the irritable parts.

After setting a broken limb they put grass and bark round it, then bind it up.

For swollen eyes they warm the leaves of certain trees and hold them to the affected parts, or make an infusion of Budtha leaves and bathe the eyes in it.

For rheumatic pains a fire is made, Budtha twigs laid on it, a little water thrown on them; the ashes raked out, a little more water thrown on, then the patient lies on top, his opossum rug spread over him, and thus his body is steamed. To induce perspiration, earth or sand is also often heated and placed in a hollowed-out space; on it the patient lies, and is covered with more heated earth.

Pennyroyal infused they consider a great blood purifier they also use a heap as a pillow if suffering from insomnia. It is hard to believe a black ever does suffer from insomnia, yet the cure argues the fact.

Beefwood gum is supposed to strengthen children. It is also used for reducing swollen joints. A hole is made in the ground, some coals put in, on them some beefwood leaves, on top of them the gum; over the hole is put enough bark to cover it with a piece cut out of it the size of the swollen joint to be steamed, which joint is held over this hole.

Various fats are also used as cures. Iguana fat for pains in the head and stiffness anywhere. Porcupine and opossum fats for preserving their hair, fish fat to gloss their skins, emu fat in cold weather to save their skins from chapping.

But what is supposed to strengthen them more than anything, both mentally and physically, is a small piece of the flesh of a dead person, or before a body is put in a bark coffin a few incisions were made in it; when it was coffined it was stood on end, and what drained from the incisions was caught in small wirrees and drunk by the mourners.

I fancy such cannibalism as has been in these tribes was not with a view to satisfaction of appetite but to the incorporation of additional strength. Either men or women are allowed to assist in this particularly nauseating funeral rite, but not the young people.

Nor must their shadows fall across any one who has partaken of this rite; should they do so some evil will befall them.

If the mother of a young child has not enough milk for its sustenance, she is steamed over 'old man' saltbush, and hot twigs of it laid on her breasts. To expedite the expulsion of the afterbirth, an old woman presses the patient round the waist, gives her frequent drinks of cold water, and sprinkles water over her. As soon as the afterbirth is removed a steam is prepared. Two logs are laid horizontally, some stones put in between them, then some fire, on top leaves of eucalyptus, and water is then sprinkled over them. The patient stands astride these logs, an opossum rug all over her, until she is well steamed. After this she is able to walk about as if nothing unusual had happened. Every night for about a month she has to lie on a steam bed made of damped eucalyptus leaves. She is not allowed to return to the general camp for about three months after the birth of her child.

Though perfectly well, she is considered unclean, and not allowed to touch anything belonging to any one. Her food is brought to her by some old woman. Were she to touch the food or food utensils of another they would be considered unclean and unfit for use. Her camp is gailie—that is, only for her; and she is goorerwon as soon as her child is born—a woman unclean and apart. Immediately a' baby is born it is washed in cold water.

Ghastly traditions the blacks have of the time when Dunnerh-Dunnerh, the smallpox, decimated their ancestors. Enemies sent it in the winds, which hung it on the trees, over the camps, whence it dropped on to its victims. So terror-stricken were the tribes that, with few exceptions, they did not stay to bury their dead; and because they did not do so, flying even from the dying, a curse was laid on them that some day the plague would return, brought back by the Wundah or white devils; and the blacks shudder still, though it was generations before them, at the thought that such a horror may come again.

Poison-stones are ground up finely and placed in the food of the person desired to be got rid of. These poison-stones are of two kinds, a yellowish-looking stone and a black one; they cause a lingering death. The small bones of the wrist of a dead person are also pounded up and put into food, in honey or water, as a poison.

One cure struck me as quaint. The patient may be lying down, when up will come one of the tribe, most likely a wirreenun with a big piece of bark. He strikes the ground with this all round the patient, making a great row; this is to frighten the sickness away.

What seems to me a somewhat peculiar ceremony is the reception a coming baby holds before its birth.

The baby is presumably about to be born. Its grandmother is there naturally, but the black baby declines to appear at the request of its grandmother, and, moreover, declines to come if even the voice of its grandmother is heard; so grannie has to be a silent spectator while some other woman tempts the baby into the world by descanting on the glories of it. First, perhaps, she will say:

'Come now, here's your auntie waiting to see you.'

'Here's your sister.'

'Here's your father's sister,' and so on through a whole list. Then she will say, as the relatives and friends do not seem a draw:

'Make haste, the bumble fruit is ripe. The guiebet flowers are blooming. The grass is waving high. The birds are all talking. And it is a beautiful place, hurry up and see for yourself.'

But it generally happens that the baby is too cute to be tempted, and an old woman has to produce what she calls a wi-mouyan—a clever stick—which she waves over the expectant mother, crooning a charm which brings forth the baby.

If any one nurses a patient and the patient dies, the nurse wears an armlet of opossum's hair called goomil, and a sort of fur boa called gurroo.

If blacks go visiting, when they leave they make a smoke fire and smoke themselves, so that they may not carry home any disease.

As a rule blacks do not have small feet, but their hands are almost invariably small and well shaped, having tapering fingers.



CHAPTER VI

OUR WITCH WOMAN

Our witch woman was rather a remarkable old person. When she was, I suppose, considerably over sixty, her favourite granddaughter died.

Old Bootha was in a terrible state of grief, and chopped herself in a most merciless manner at the burial, especially about the head. She would speak to no one, used to spend her time about the grave, round which she fixed upright posts which she painted white, red, and black. All round the grave she used to sweep continually.

More and more she isolated herself, and at last discarded all her clothes and roamed the bush A LA Eve before the Fall, as she had probably done as a young girl.

She dug herself an underground camp, roofed it over, and painted enormous posts which she erected in front of her 'Muddy wine,' as she called her camp. She never came near the house, though we had been great friends before.

She used to prowl round the outhouses and pick up all sorts of things, rubbish for the most part, but often good utensils too; all used to be secreted in the underground camp. She never talked to any one, but used to mutter continually to herself and her dogs in an unknown tongue which only her dogs seemed to understand.

We thought she was quite mad.

One day, while we were playing tennis, she suddenly, muttering her strange language and dancing new corroboree steps, clad only in her black skin, came up. Matah told her to go away, but she only corroboreed round him and said she wanted to see me. I have the most morbid horror of lunacy in any form. I was once induced to go over a lunatic asylum—the horror of it haunts me still. However, I thought it would never do to show the coward I was, so though I felt as if I had been scooped out and filled up with ice, I went to her. She danced round me for a little time, then sidled up to me and said:

'Wahl you frightened, wahl me hurt you. I only womba—mad—all yowee—spirits—in me tell me gubbah—good—I lib 'long a youee; bimeby I come back big feller wirreenun; wahl you frightened? I not hurt you.'

And after crooning an accompaniment to her steps off she went, a strange enough figure, dancing and crooning as she went towards her camp; and not until the spirits gave up possession of her did she come near the house again.

One day she gave us a start. We were schooling a new team of four horses. The off-side leader had only been in once before, and was a brumby (horse run in from a wild mob). We had to pass Bootha's camp. I looked about as we neared it but saw nothing of her. Suddenly from the ground, as it seemed, out dashed the weird old figure, arms full of things, jabbering away at a great rate. Whiz came a tin plate past the leaders' heads; the offside horse reared and plunged and took some holding. Whiz came an old bill; then, one after another, a regular fusilade of various utensils.

It did not take us long to get past, but for as long as we could see the attack was kept up. Coming back we saw nothing of Bootha, and all the utensils had been picked up.

I used to tell the other blacks to see that Bootha had plenty of food. They said she was all right, the spirits were looking after her. Lunatics, from their point of view, are only persons spirit-possessed.

Gradually old Bootha, clothed as usual, came back about the place.

Strange stories came through the house blacks to me of old Bootha. She was very ill for a long time, then suddenly she recovered; not only recovered but seemed rejuvenated. We heard of wonderful cures she made; how she always consulted the spirits about any illness; how there were said to be spirits in some of her dogs; how she was now a rainmaker and, in fact, a fully fledged witch.

I was curious to see some of these wonders, so used to get the old woman to come up when any one was ill, consult her, and generally make much of her. There is no doubt she could diagnose a case well enough. Matah suffered a good deal with a constant pain in one knee, he was quite lame from it. He showed it to Bootha one day. She sang a song to her spirits, then said:

'Too muchee water there; you steam him, put him on hot rag; you drink plenty cold water, all lite dat go.'

As it happened a medical man was passing a few days afterwards with an insurance agent. Matah consulted him.

'Hum! Yes, yes. Hot fomentations to the place affected, poultices, a cooling draught. There's a stoppage of fluid at the knee-joint which must be dispersed.'

I thought Bootha ought to have been called in consultation.

A girl I had staying with me was taken suddenly and, to us, unaccountably ill. She was just able to get out of her room into the drawing-room, where she would lie back on the cushions of a lounge looking dreadfully limp and utterly washed out. Hearing of her illness old Bootha came up. I thought it might amuse Adelaide to see an old witch; she agreed, so I brought her in.

Bootha went straight up to the sick girl, expressed a few sympathetic sentences, then she said she would ask the spirits what had made Adelaide ill and what would cure her.

She moved my furniture until she left the centre of the room clear; she squatted down, and hanging her head began muttering in an unintelligible dialect. Presently her voice ceased and we heard from beside her a most peculiar whistling sort of voice, to which she responded, evidently interrogating. Again the whistling voice from further away. Bootha then told me she had asked a dead black fellow, Big Joe, to tell her what she wanted to know; but he could not, so now she was going to ask her dead granddaughter. Again she said a sort of incantation, and again, after a while, came the whistling voice reply—this time from another direction, not quite so loud. The same sort of thing was gone through with the same result.

Then Bootha said she would ask Guadgee, a black girl who had been one of my first favourites in the camp, and who had died a few years previously.

The whistling voice came from a third direction, though all the time I could see Bootha's lips moving.

Guadgee answered all she was asked. She said Adelaide was made ill because she had offended the spirits by bathing in the creek under the shade of a Minggah, or spirit-tree, a place tabooed to all but wirreenuns, or such as hold communion with spirits.

Of course, according to the blacks, to disturb a shadow is to hurt the original.

In this Minggah, Guadgee said, were swarms of bees invisible to all but wirreenuns, and they are ready always to resent any insult to the Minggah or its shadow. These spirit-bees had entered Adelaide and secreted some wax on her liver; their bites, Guadgee said, were on her back.

Well, that can't be it, I said, I for you never did bathe in the shade of a Minggah; for, going as you always do with the house-girls, you are bound to be kept from such sacrilege; they would never dare such desecration.'

'Which is their Minggah? Is it a big Coolabah between the Bend and the garden?'

'Yes.'

'Then I did bathe there the last time I went down. I was up too late to go with the Black-but-Comelys, and as the sun was hot I went further round the point and bathed in the shade. And the bee-bites must be those horribly irritating pimples I have across my back.'

The cause of illness settled to her satisfaction, Bootha asked how to cure it. The patient was to drink nothing hot nor heating but as much cold water as she liked, especially a long drink before going to bed. Guadgee said she would come in the night when the patient was asleep and take the wax from her liver; she would sleep well and wake better in the morning.

Bootha got up then, came over to the patient, took her hand, rubbed it round the wrist several times, muttering an incantation; then saying she would see her again next day, off she went, taking, she told us, all the spirits away inside her, whence at desire they could be returned to such Minggah in their own Noorunbah, or hereditary hunting-grounds, as wirreenuns had placed them in, or to roam at their pleasure when not required by those in authority over spirits. Our old spiritualist denies us freedom even in the after-life she promises us.

Adelaide slept that night, looked a better colour the next morning, and rapidly recovered.

We think old Bootha must be a good physician and a ventriloquist, only I believe it is said ventriloquists cannot live long, and Bootha is now over eighty.

Others besides wirreenuns see spirits sometimes, but rarely, though wirreenuns are said to have the power to conjure them up in a form visible to ordinary eyes.

Babies are said to see spirits when they are smiling or crowing as if to themselves; it's to some spirit visible to them but to no one else.

When a baby opens his hands and shuts them again quickly, smiling all the while, that baby is with the spirits catching crabs!

Dogs see spirits; when they bark and howl suddenly and you see nothing about, it is because they have seen a spirit.

One person may embody many spirits, but such an one must be careful not to drink anything hot or heating, such would drive out the spirits at once. The spirits would never enter a person defiled by the white man's 'grog.'

Old Bootha had an interview with a very powerful spirit after she was ill, who told her that the spirit of her father was now in Bahloo, the moon; and that it was this spirit which had cured her, and if she kept his commands she would live for ever. The commands were never to drink 'grog,' never to wear red, never to eat fish. This was told her fifteen years ago, never once has she transgressed; her vigour for an old woman considerably over eighty is marvellous.

She was going away for a trip. Before going she said, as she would not be able to know when I wanted rain for my garden, she would put two posts in it which had in them the spirits of Kurreahs, or crocodiles. As these spirits required water I might be certain my tanks would never go dry while they were on guard. She asked one of my Black-but-Comelys, a very stalwart young woman, to help her lift one of these posts into the garden where she wanted to erect it. The girl took hold of one end, but in a little while dropped it, said it was too heavy. Old Bootha got furious.

'I get the spirits to help me,' she said, and started a little sing-song, then shouldered the post herself and carried it in. These posts are painted red, black, and white, with a snaky pattern, the Kurreah sign, on them. She also planted in my garden two other witch-poles, one painted red and having a cross-bar about midway down it from which raddled strings were attached to the top; this was to keep away the Euloowayi, black fellows possessed of devils, who came from behind the sunset.

The other was a plain red-painted, tapering pine-pole which she said, when it fell to the ground, would tell of the death of some one related to an inmate of the house. Should it lean towards the house it foretold misfortune; or if she were any time away, when she was returning she would send her Mullee Mullee to sit on the top and bend it just to let us know. This pole would also keep away the spirits of the dead from the house during her absence. While she was away there would be no one to come and clear the place of evil by smoking the Budtha twigs all round it, as she always did if I were alone and, she thought, in need of protection.

Old Bootha has what she calls a wi-mouyan, clever-stick. It is about six feet long, great lumps of beefwood gum making knobs on it at intervals; between each knob it is painted. Armed with this stick, a piece of crystal, some green twigs, and sometimes a stick with a bunch of feathers on top, and a large flat stone, she goes out to make rain. The crystal and stone she puts under the water in the creek, the feathered stick she erects on the edge of the water, then goes in and splashes about with green twigs, singing all the time.

After a while she gets out and parades the bank with the wi-mouyan, singing a rain-song which charms some of the water out of the creek into the clouds, whence it falls where she directs it. Once my garden of roses looked very wilted. I asked Bootha to make rain, but just then she was very offended with Matah. One of her dogs had been poisoned, she would make no rain on his country. However, at last she said she would make some for me. I bound her down to a certain day. The day came; a heavy storm fell just over my garden, filling the ground tank, which was almost empty. About two inches fell. Within half a mile of each side of the garden the dust was barely laid.

Old Bootha's luck stuck to her that time, and I had to give her a new dress and some 'bacca.' But during the last drought she failed signally. Her excuse for failing was that a great wirreenun up the creek was so angry with the white people who were driving away all emu, kangaroo, and opossums, the black fellow's food, and yet made a fuss if their dogs killed a sheep for them sometimes, that he put his rain-stone in a fire, and while he did that no rain would fall. He said if all the sheep died the white fellows would go away again, and then, as long ago, the black fellows' country would have plenty of emu and kangaroo.

We saw a curious coincidence in connection with one of Bootha's witch-poles in my garden, the pole whose falling foretold death of some relative of some one in the house.

One afternoon there had been drizzling rain and a grey mist overshadowing things. Matah went out to look at the chances of a continuance of rain, the usual drought being on. He called to me to come and see a curious sky. Looking towards the west I saw a golden ball of a sun piercing the grey clouds which seemed like a spangled veil over its face; shooting from the sun was a perfect halo of golden light, from which three shafts spread into roadways up past the grey clouds into the vault of heaven. The effect was very striking indeed, against the grey clouds shaded from silver to almost black.

As we stood waiting for the sun to sink and the afterglow to paint these clouds, as it did, from shrimp pink and heliotrope to vivid crimson, we saw Bootha's pole fall. The air was quite still.

'The damp has loosened its setting,' said Matah, 'but we had better leave it alone and let the old girl fix it up again herself; it may be taboo to ordinary mortals like us.'

We left it.

That evening a messenger arrived from the sheep station to say my cook's mother had died just before sunset. The camp were firm believers in Bootha's witch-stick after that.

It was just as well we did not touch that stick; had we done so, Bootha says we should have broken out in sores all over our bodies.

They say that long ago the wirreenuns always used to have a sort of totem wizard-stick guarding the front of their camps.



CHAPTER VII

BIRTH—BETROTHAL—AN ABORIGINAL GIRL FROM INFANCY TO WOMANHOOD

To begin at the beginning, Bahloo, the moon, is a sort of patron of women. He it is who creates the girl babies, assisted by Wahn, the crow, sometimes.

Should Wahn attempt the business on his own account the result is direful; women of his creating are always noisy and quarrelsome.

Bahloo's favourite spot for carrying on the girl manufacturing is somewhere on the Culgoa. On one of the creeks there is to be seen, when it is dry, a hole in the ground. As water runs along, the bed of this creek, gradually a stone rises from this hole. As the water rises it rises, always keeping its top out of the water.

This is the Goomarh, or spirit-stone, of Bahloo. No one would dare to touch this stone where the baby girls' spirits are launched into space.

In the same neighbourhood is a clear water-hole, the rendezvous of the snakes of Bahloo. Should a man go to drink there he sees no snakes, but no sooner has he drunk some of the water than he sees hundreds; so even water-drinkers see their snakes.

The name of the hole is Dahn.

Spirit-babies are usually despatched to Waddahgudjaelwon and sent by her to hang promiscuously on trees, until some woman passes under where they are, then they will seize a mother and be incarnated. This resembles the Arunta belief, but with the Euahlayi the spirits are new freshly created beings, not reincarnations of ancestral souls, as among the Arunta. To live, a child must have an earthly father; that it has not, is known by its being born with teeth.

Wurrawilberoo is said to snatch up a baby spirit sometimes and whirl along towards some woman he wishes to discredit, and through the medium of this woman he incarnates perhaps twins, or at least one baby. No doubt were it not for signs of teeth in a spirit-baby of immaculate conception, many a camp scandal would be conveniently nipped in the bud.

Babies are sometimes sent directly to their mothers without the Coolabah-tree or whirlwind medium.

The bronze mistletoe branches with their orange-red flowers are said to be the disappointed babies whose wailing in vain for mothers has wearied the spirits who transform them into these bunches, the red flowers being formed from their baby blood. The spirits of babies and children who die young are reincarnated, and should their first mother have pleased them they choose her again and are called millanboo—the same again.

They can instead, if they like, choose some other woman they know, which seems very accommodating in those presiding over the reincarnation department.

Sometimes two baby spirits will hang on one branch and incarnate themselves in the same woman, who as result is the mother of twins, and the object of much opprobrium in the camp. In fact, in the old days, one of the twins would have been killed.

One of my Black-but-Comelys said, on hearing that a woman had twins:

'If it had been me I would have put my fingers round the throat of one of them and killed it.' The woman who made this speech I had always looked upon as the gentlest and kindliest of creatures.

The father of the twins has treated his wife with the utmost contempt since their birth, and declines to acknowledge more than one of the babies.

They say the first-born of twins is always born grinning with his tongue out, as if to say, 'There's another to come yet; nice sort of mother I have.'

No wonder the women cover themselves under a blanket when they see a whirlwind coming, and avoid drooping Coolabah trees, believing that either may make them objects of scorn as the mother of twins.

When a baby is born, some old woman takes the Coolabah leaf out of its mouth. Such a leaf is said always to be found there if the baby was incarnated from a Coolabah tree; should this leaf not be removed it will carry the baby back to spirit-land. As soon as the leaf is taken away the baby is bathed in cold water. Hot gum leaves are pressed on the bridge of its nose to ensure its flatness; the more bridgeless the nose the greater the beauty.

When a baby clutches hold of anything as if to give it to some one, the bargie—grandmother—or some elderly woman takes what the baby offers, and makes a muffled clicking sort of noise with her tongue rolled over against the roof of her mouth, then croons the charm which is to make the child a free giver: so is generosity inculcated in extreme youth. I have often heard the grannies croon over the babies:

Oonahgnai Birrablee, Oonahgnoo Birrahlee, Oonahgnoo Birrahlee, Oonabmillangoo Birrahlee, Gunnoognoo oonah Birrahlee.

Which translated is:

'Give to me, Baby, Give to her, Baby, Give to him, Baby, Give to one, Baby, Give to all, Baby.'

As babies are all under the patronage of the moon, the mothers are very careful every new moon to make a white cross-like mark on the babies' foreheads, and white dabs on cheeks and chins.

And very careful are the mothers not to look at the full moon, nor let their babies do so; an attack of thrush would be the result.

Bahloo, too, has a spiteful way of punishing a woman who has the temerity to stare at him, by sending her the dreaded twins.

If babies do not sleep well their mothers get the red powdered stuff like pine pollen, from the joints of the Bingahwingul, or needlebush tree, and rub it on the babies' skulls and foreheads.

If the babies cry too much their mothers say evil spirits are in them, and must be smoked out. They make a smoke fire of Budtha twigs and hold the baby in the thick of the smoke. I have seen the mother of a fretful child of three or four years even, apply the smoke anodyne.

Whenever the mother of a young child woke in the night, if well up in her mother duties, she was supposed to warm her hands, and rub her baby's joints so that the child might grow lissome and a good shape, and she always saw that her baby's mouth was shut when the child was asleep lest an evilly disposed person should slip in a disease or evil-working spirit. For the same reason they will not let a baby lie on its back unless they cover its head.

If a gilah flies over the camp crying out as it passes, it is a sure sign of 'debbil debbil'; the child, to escape evil consequences, must be turned on to its left side.

If a gooloo, or magpie, did the same, the child had to be laid flat on her moobil—stomach: for the passing of a cawing crow, a child had to be laid on the right side.

As these birds are not night birds, it is evident that they are evil spirits abroad in bird form, hence the precautions. As soon as a baby begins to crawl, the mother finds a centipede, half cooks it, takes it from the fire, and catching hold of her child's hands beats them with it, crooning as she does so:

'Gheerlayi ghilayer, Wahl munnoomerhdayer, Wahl mooroonbahgoo, Yelgayerdayer deermuldayer, Gheerlayi ghilayer.'

Which means:

'Kind be, Do not steal, Do not touch what to another belongs, Leave all such alone, Kind be.'

The accompaniment being a muffled click of a rolled-up tongue against the roof of a mouth.

No child must touch the big feathers of a goomblegubbon, or bustard's wings, nor any of its bones. At the age of about four, the mother takes one of these wings and beats the child all over the shoulders and under the arms with it. Again making the clicking noise, she croons:

'Goobean gillaygoo, Oogowahdee goobolaygoo, Wahl goonundoo, Ghurranbul daygoo.'

Which charm means:

'A swimmer be, Flood to swim against, No water, Strong to stop you.' And so was a child made a good swimmer.

The wirreenuns would see that the septum of a child's nose was pierced at the right time, and their tribal marks cut on them. The nose was pierced at midwinter when ice was about, with which to numb the place to be pierced; ice was held to the septum, then prod through it went a bone needle.

An old gin who worked about the station had a pierced nose, and often wore a mouyerh, or bone, through it. A white laundress wore earrings. She said one day to the old gin:

'Why you have hole made in your nose and put that bone there? No good that. White women don't do that.'

The black woman looked the laundress up and down, and finally anchored her eyes on the earrings.

'Why you make hole in your ears? No good that. Black gin no do that, pull 'em down your ears like dogs. Plenty good bone in your nose make you sing good. Sposin' cuggil—bad—smell you put bone longa nose no smell 'im. Plenty good make hole longa nose, no good make hole longa ears, make 'em hang down all same dogs.' And off she went laughing, and pulling down the lobes of her ears, began to imitate the barking of a dog.

There is often a baby betrothal called Bahnmul.

For some reason or another it has been decided that a baby girl is to be given to a man, perhaps because he has been kind to her mother, perhaps she is owed to his kin by her own; any way the granny of the baby girl puts feathers, white swansdown, on the baby's head, and takes her over to the man when she is about a month old. Granny says to the baby:

'Look at him, and remember him, because you are promised to him.'

Then she takes some feathers off the baby's head and puts them on to his; that makes it a formal betrothal, binding to both sides.

I have heard great camp rows because girls made a struggle for independence, having found out they had only been promised, not formally betrothed, to some old chap whom they did not wish to marry. Perhaps the old fellow will already have a wife or so, a man can have as many as he pleases. I have heard of one with three; I have known some with two; but the generality of them seem content with one.

Should a young girl marry a man with an old wife, the old wife rules her to any extent, not even letting her have a say about her own children, and no duenna could be stricter. Should the young wife in the absence of her husband speak to a young man, she will probably get a scolding from the old wife and a 'real hiding' from the old man, to whom the old wife will report her conduct. Quite young men often marry quite old women; a reason sometimes given is that these young men were on earth before and loved these same women, but died before their initiation, so could not marry until now in their reincarnation.

Certainly, amongst the blacks, age is no disqualification for a woman; she never seems to be too old to marry, and certainly with age gains power.

At whatever age a girl may be betrothed to a man he never claims her while she is yet Mullerhgun, or child girl; not until she is Wirreebeeun, or woman girl.

A girl's initiation into womanhood is as follows. Her granny probably, or some old woman relation, takes her from the big camp into the scrub where they make a bough shade. As soon as this is made, the old woman sets fire to a thick heap of Budtha leaves and makes the girl swallow the smoke. She then bids her lie down in a scooped-out hollow she has made in the earth, saying to her, 'You are to be made a young woman now. No more must you run about as you please. Here must you stay with me, doing as I say. Then in two moons' time you shall go and claim your husband, to do for ever what he bids you. You must not sleep as you lie there in the day time, nor must you go to sleep at night until those in the camp are at rest. I will put food ready for you. Honey you must not eat again for four moons. At first streak of day you must get up, and eat the food I have placed for you. Then when you hear a bird note you must shake yourself all over, and make a noise like this.'

And the old woman makes a ringing noise with her lips.

'That you must do every time you hear a fresh bird note; so too when you hear the people in the camp begin to talk, or even if you hear them laugh or sneeze. If you do not, then grey will your hair be while you are yet a young woman, dull will your eyes be, and limp your body.'

Girls have told me that they got very tired of being away with only the old woman for so long, and were glad enough when she told them they were to move to a new camp, nearer to the big one, which the women had prepared for them.

When they reached this the old woman rubbed off the mud with which she had plastered the girl's limbs when first they went away to camp, and which she had renewed from time to time. When this was all off she painted the girl in different designs with red ochre and white gypsum, principally in spots. She put on her head a gnooloogail, or forehead band, made of Kurrajong fibre, plaited and tied with some Kurrajong string, from over the cars to the back of the head; in this band, which she had painted white, she stuck sprays of white flowers. Sweetly scented Budtha and clustering Birah were the flowers most used for this ceremony. Should neither of these be in bloom, then sprays of Collarene or Coolibah blossom were used. When the flowers were placed in the band the old woman scattered a handful of white swansdown over the girl's head. Next she tied round her a girdle of opossum's sinews with strands of woven opossum's hair hanging about a foot square in front. Round her arms she bound goomils—opossum hair armlets—into which she placed more sprays of flowers, matching those in the girl's hair.

To show that the occasion was a sacred one a sprig of Dheal tree was placed through the hole in the septum of the nose. The toilet of a wirreebeeun was now complete.

The old woman gave her a bunch of smoking Budtha leaves to carry, and told her what to do. Note here the origin of bridal bouquets.

Having received her instructions, the girl, holding the smoking twigs, went towards the big camp.

When the women there saw her coming they began to sing a song in, to her, a strange language.

On a log, with his back towards her—for he must not yet look on her face—sat the man to whom she was betrothed. The girl went up to him. As the women chanted louder she threw the smoking Budtha twigs away, placed a hand on each of his shoulders and shook him. Then she turned and ran back to her new camp, the women singing and pelting her with dry twigs and small sticks as she went. For another moon she stayed with her granny in this camp, then the women made her another one nearer.

In a few weeks they made her one on the outskirts of the main camp. Here she stayed until they made her another in the camp, but a little apart. In front of the opening of this dardurr they made a fire. That night her betrothed camped on one side of this fire and she on the other. For a moon they camped so. Then the old granny told the girl she must camp on the same side of the fire as her betrothed, and as long as she lived be his faithful and obedient wife, having no thought of other men. Should he ill-treat her, her relations had the power to take her from him. Or should he for some reason, after a while, not care for her, he can send her back to her people; should she have a child he leaves it with her until old enough to camp away from her, when it is returned to him.

The wedding presents are not given to the bride and bridegroom, but by the latter to his mother-in-law, to whom, however, he is never allowed to speak. Failing a mother-in-law, the presents are given to the nearest of kin to the wife. You can hardly reckon it as purchase money, for sometimes a man gives no presents and yet gets a wife.

In books about blacks, you always read of the subjection of the women, but I have seen henpecked black husbands.

There are two codes of morals, one for men and one for women. Old Testament morality for men, New Testament for women. The black men keep the inner mysteries of the Boorah, or initiation ceremonies, from the knowledge of women, but so do Masons keep their secrets.

As to the black women carrying most of the baggage on march, naturally so; the men want their hands free for hunting en route, or to be in readiness for enemies in a strange country.

Black women think a great deal of the Moonaibaraban, or as they more often call them, Kumbuy, or sister-in-law. These are spirit-women who come a few days after the Boorah to bring presents to the women relations of the boys who have been initiated. The Kumbuy are never seen, but their voices are heard—voices like dogs barking; on hearing which the women in the camp have to answer, calling out:

'Are you my Kumbuy?'

An answer comes like a muffled bark, 'Bah! bah bah!'

Then the old men—crafty old men—go out to where the 'bahing' comes from, and bring in the gifts, which take the form of food, yams, honey, fruit principally.

These Kumbuy are among the few beneficent spirits they never hurt any one, simply supply the bereaved women with comfort in the shape of food, for the temporary loss of their male relatives. Should an uninitiate have a wife, which of course is improper, the Kumbuy decline to recognise her; and should she presume to answer their spirit back, they make in token of displeasure a thudding noise as if earth were being violently banged with a yam stick. She has encroached on the Kumbuy preserves, for prior to his initiation a man should only have a spirit wife, never an incarnate one.

If you ask a black woman why the Kumbuy thud the earth in answer to an initiate's wife, she will say:

'Dat one jealous.' jealousy even in the spirit world of women!

Unchaste women were punished terribly. After we went west even the death penalty for wantonness was enforced, though at the time we did not know it.

Should a girl be found guilty of a frailty, it being her first fault, her brothers and nearest male relations made a ring round her, after having bound her hands and feet, and toss her one from the other until she is in a dazed condition and almost frightened to death.

The punishment over, she is unbound and given to her betrothed, or a husband chosen for her.

Should a woman have been discovered to be an absolute wanton, men from any of the clans make a ring round her, she being bound, and tossed from one to the other, and when exhausted is unbound and left by her relations to the men to do as they please to her—the almost inevitable result is death. With this terror before them, it is possible the old blacks are right who say that their women were very different in their domestic relations in olden times.



CHAPTER VIII

THE TRAINING OF A BOY UP TO BOORAH PRELIMINARIES

At the boy manufactory, Boomayahmayahmul, the wood lizard, was the principal worker, though Bahloo from time to time gave him assistance.

The little blacks throw their mythical origin at each other tauntingly. A little black girl, when offended with a boy friend, says:

'Ooh, a lizard made you.'

'Wah! wah! a crow made you,' he retorts.

Up to a certain age boys are trained as are girls—charms sung over them to make them generous, honest, good swimmers, and the rest; but after that they are taken into the Weedegah, or bachelors' camp, and developed on manly lines.

When he is about seven years old, his mother will paint her son up every day for about a week with red and white colourings. After that he would go to the Weedegah Gahreemai, bachelors' camp. He would then be allowed to go hunting with boys and men. He would see, now when he was out with the men, how fire was made in the olden time, almost a lost art now when wax matches are plentiful.

No boy who had not been to a Boorah would dare to try to make fire.

The implements for fire-making are a little log about as thick as a man's arm, of Nummaybirah wood—a rather soft white wood—and a split flat piece about a foot long and three inches wide. The little log was split open at one end, a wedge put in it, and the opening filled up with dry grass broken up. This log was laid on the ground and firmly held there; the fire-maker squatted in front, and with the flat piece rubbed edgeways across the opening in the log. The sawdust fell quickly into the opening. After about a minute and a half's rubbing a smoke started out. After rubbing on a little longer the fire-maker took a handful of dry grass, emptied the smoking sawdust and dry grass into it, waved it about, and in three and a half minutes from starting the process I have seen a blaze. Sometimes it has taken longer, but just under five minutes is the longest time I have ever seen it take.

They use pine too, I believe, but whenever I timed them it was Nummaybirah they were using.

The boys pick up the woodcraft of the tribes when they begin going out with the men. As the boys began to grow up, when a good season came round, and game and grass were plentiful, the old men were seen to draw apart often and talk earnestly.

At length there came a night when was heard a whizzing, whirling boom far in the scrub. As the first echo of it reached the camp, the women, such as were still young enough to bear children, stopped their ears, for should any such hear the Gurraymi, the women's name for the Gayandi, or Boorah spirit's voice, that spirit will first make them mad, then kill them.

The old women began to sing a Boorah song. To deaden the sound of the dreaded voice, opossum rugs were thrown over the children, none of whom must hear, unless they are boys old enough to be initiated; the sound reveals the fact to such that the hour of their initiation is at hand.

The men all gathered together with the boys, except two old wirreenuns, who earlier in the evening have seemingly quarrelled and gone away into the scrub.

The men and boys in camp march up and down to some distance from the camp. The old women keep on singing, and one man with a spear painted red with a waywah fastened on top, walks up and down in the middle of the crowd of men, holding the spear, with its emblematic belt of manhood, aloft; as he does so, calling out the names of the bends of the creek, beginning with the one nearest to which they are camped. When he gets to the end of the names along that creek and comes to the name of a big river, all the men join him in giving a loud crow like

'Wah! wah! wah!'

Then he begins with the names along the next creek across the big river, and so on; at the mention of each main stream the crowd again join in the cry of

'Wah! wah! wah!'

All the while, closer and still closer, comes the sound of the Gayandi, as the men call the Gurraymi, or bull roarer.

At length the two old wirreenuns come back to the camp and the noise ceases, to recur sometimes during the night, when I expect, did any one search for them, the old wirreenuns would be found missing from the camp.

After the first whirling of the bull roarers and calling of the creek names, the Gooyeanawannah, or messengers, prepare for a journey, and when ready, the wirreenuns start them off in various directions to summon neighbouring tribes from hundreds of miles round to attend the Boorah. The messengers each carry a spear with a waywah (or belt of manhood) on the top, seeing which no tribe, even at enmity with the messenger, will molest him. When a messenger arrived at a strange camp, he was not asked his business but left to choose his own time for telling. He would squat down a little way from the strangers' camp, food would probably be brought to him which he would cat.

He would find out who was the chief wirreenun of the tribe, then take him apart, give to him his Boorah message-stick as guarantee of his good faith, and tell him where and when the Boorah was to be held. After having given all necessary information, the Gooyeanawannah would return to his tribe; the wirreenun to whom he had given the Doolooboorah, or message-stick, would send it on by the messenger of his tribe, and so with others, until all were summoned, each tribe letting it be known that a Boorah summons had been received by sounding the Gayandi, which would carry its own tale to those in the camp.

Should young boys be chosen as messengers, they were held in high honour; Woormerh they were called.

While the messengers were away, the old men of the tribe in whose Noorumbah, or hereditary hunting lands, the Boorah was to be held, prepared the sacred grounds.

They cleared a big circle, round which they put a bank of earth, and from the circle was cleared a path leading to a thick scrub; along this path were low earthen embankments, and the trees on both sides had the bark stripped off, and carved on them the various totems and multiplex totems of the tribes. Such carvings were also put on the trees round the Bunbul, or little Boorah ring, where the branches were also in some instances lopped, and the trunks carved and painted to represent figures of men, amongst whom were supposed to be the sons of Byamee's wives. Two of these sons had been made young men at the first Boorah Byamee instituted in this district, the ground of which is pointed out to this day.

In the middle of the Bunbul a large heap of wood was placed ready for the Yungawee, or sacred fire.

When the preliminary preparations were over, the camps were moved to just outside the Boorah, or big Boorah ring. By that time the other tribes began to arrive. First came from each tribe the boys to be initiated and the Munthdeeguns, or men in charge of them. The men were painted, and had leafy twigs tied round their wrists and ankles, as had the boys also, and all carried in their hands small branches of green. Those especially in charge of boys held, too, a painted spear with a waywah on top of it.

As they approached the place of gathering the head man, with the painted spear, began calling out all the names of the places along the creeks from whence he came; at the name of each big watercourse they all cried together

'Wah! Wah! wah!'

They were met at some distance from the camp by the men who had summoned them, and who had made a round brush yard where they were to meet them. Here the older women were singing Boorah songs. Some held their breasts as a sign they had sons among the initiates; others put their hands on their shoulders, which showed they had brothers going to be made young men. All the women had leafy twigs tied round their wrists and ankles as the men had. The newcomers and the men who met them walked round the yard at a measured beat, lifting one leg and throwing up one arm each time the cry of 'Wah! wah! wah!' was given, for here too the enumeration of geographical names went on.

When the Boorah song was over, the men marched out of the yard; closely behind them the two oldest men with the tufted spears; the Boorah boys closely after them. The women followed, carrying bunches of leafy twigs with which they pelted the boys until they reached the camp.

Matah and I had been watching the whole performance, and followed in the wake of the women.

The whole scene impressed us as picturesque—the painted figures of the men and boys, with the peculiarly native stealthy tread, threading their way through the grey Coolabah trees; the decorated women throwing their leafy missiles with accurate aim into the ranks of the boys, who did not dare to look at their assailants. A Boorah boy must give no evidence of curiosity; the NIL ADMIRARI attitude then begun clings to a black man through life. The women of the tribe express voluble surprise, but a black man never except by the dilation of his eyes.

Every night after this a corroboree was held. The fully initiated of each tribe, as they arrived, help in the preparation of the inner sacred ground, while the younger men collected game and other food.

The old men cut out of the ground along the narrow path leading to the Bunbul, and round it, huge earthen animals, their various totems, such as crocodiles, kangaroos, emus and others, all of a colossal size. These they plastered over with mud and painted in different colours and designs. On the right of the Bunbul they made an earthen figure of Byamee—this figure was reclining holding in each hand a Boondee. On the other side was the huge figure of a woman—this represented Birrahgnooloo, the favourite wife of Byamee; she held two spears. There was a third figure not so large as the other two but like them, apart from the figures near the path and the Bunbul; this was Baillahburrah, according to some, Dillalee according to others, the supernatural son of Byamee—or as some say, brother—not born of woman, having lived before the human race existed, before Byamee travelled as Creator and culture hero through Australia.

Of the Gayandi, the Boorah spirit, sometimes called Wallahgooroonboooan, there was no figure, because he was always present at Boorahs, though invisible. His voice only gave evidence of his presence.

The wirreenuns said it was he who had placed in the forks of trees round the big ring heaps of dry wood, which they said, when the ceremonies began, he would light, making a dazzling illumination of the scene.

In the middle of the Boorah ring was placed a mudgee, a painted stick or spear, with a bunch of hawk's feathers on the top. Every night was heard at intervals the Gayandi, and immediately the younger women and children stopped their ears, while the old women shrieked their BRUMBOORAH.

As each fresh batch of blacks arrived the volume of sound was increased, for the old men with their Gayandi would go into the scrub and whirl them. These bull roarers sound curiously uncanny—I did not wonder the uninitiated accepted the spirit theory as to their origin.

The bush of Australia is a good background for superstition; there is such a non-natural air about its Nature, as if it has been sketched in roughly by a Beardsley-like artist.

The function of the Gayandi is to inspire awe, and it fulfils it. Byamee himself made the first. It was some time before he got quite the effect he wanted. At first he desired to give the Boorah spirit a form as well as a voice, to inspire awe; he also wished it to knock out the front tooth of an initiate.

He made a stone figure in the image of man, having a voice. This spirit, known variously as Gayandi, or Darramulun, went to the Boorah, but when he was to knock out the front tooth, he began to eat the boys' faces. He was too strong; he would not do to preside over, Boorahs. Byamee transformed him into a large piggiebillah-like animal, though instead of being covered with spines, thick hair grew over him; he has since been known as Nahgul. He went away into the bush, where he has been a dreaded devil ever since; for if he touches a man's shadow even, that man will itch all over and nothing can cure him of it. He haunts Boorah grounds.

Next Byamee made a stone bull roarer sort of thing, but this was too heavy to make the noise he wanted. One day he was chopping a big Coolabah tree close to Weetalibah water-hole, which tree, much to the horror of our blacks, was burnt down a few years ago by travellers.

As Byamee chopped, out flew a big chip. He heard the whizzing sound it made, gave another chop, out flew another; again the whizzing sound.

'That is what I want,' he said I'll make a Gayandi of wood.'

He cut a piece of mubboo, or beefwood, and shaped it; he tied a piece of string to a hole in one end; he hung it up in the big Coolabah tree. Then he went and cut one out of Noongah or Kurrajong, tied a string on to that and put it beside the other on the tree, and left them swinging there.

One day he came back and was camping near; his wives, came along to the big tree. There the Gayandi swung, making a whirring noise.

'What's that?' said the women. 'We'll have a look what it is.' Seeing Byamee they said, 'We heard voices in that big tree over there.'

'Whereabouts?' he said.

'In that Coolabah tree. Such strange voices, such as we never heard.'

'You two go' he said, 'to our camp and make a fire. I'll go and see what it is.'

When the women were out of sight he went to the tree and took the pieces of wood down. He was satisfied now they would answer his purpose. He carefully hid them until he made a Boorah. And since then such pieces of wood have been the medium for the Gayandi's voice, and are kept carefully hidden away from all but the eyes of wirreenuns.

At length all the expected tribes had arrived, preparations were finished, and a signal was given for a move to be made that the real ceremonies might begin.

The fully initiated men went away after their midday meal, and about sundown came in single file along the banked-in path each carrying a firestick in one hand, a green switch in the other. When they reached the mudgee in the middle of the big ring and corroboreed for a little round it, the old women answered with a Boorah song, and all moved to the edge of the ring. At this stage men often tried to steal each other's boys, and great wrestling matches came off. One man would try to pull up the mudgee, out would rush one of another clan to wrestle with him. First the boys would wrestle, then the elder men, each determined his clan should prove victorious at this great Boorah wrestling.

The skill of the eeramooun, or uninitiated boys, would be tried in sham fights too. They were given bark shields, and their attackers had bark boomerangs; great was the applause when the boys ably defended themselves. Previously they have been tried with boomerang and boodthul throwing, and other arts of sport and warfare, boys of each tribe trying to excel those of the others. If a boy comes well out of these trials the men say he is worthy to be a yelgidyi, or fully initiated young man.

When the wrestling and sham fights are over, corroborees begin. All night they are kept up, and sometimes there are day performances too.



CHAPTER IX

THE BOORAH AND OTHER MEETINGS

At last would come the night when everything was ready. Sports and corroborees would be held as usual, until, at a given signal, the younger women were ordered into bough sheds which were round the ring.

The old women stayed on singing.

The boys, who are painted red, are beckoned into the middle of the ring, where their respective Munthdeeguns daub them with white. That done, each man seizing his charge, hoists him on to his shoulder, and dances round the ring with him. Then the old women are told to bid the boys good-bye.

Forward they come, singing each her own brumboorah, for every oldest woman relation of each of the boys makes a song for him. They corroboree a few steps behind the men, chanting a farewell, then corroboree back a few steps, then hasten to join the younger women in the bough sheds, which are now pulled down on top of them by the men, that they may see nothing further. Then the Munthdeeguns disappear down the track into the scrub.

When they are out of sight the women are released, that they may get ready to travel to where the Durrawunga, or Little Boorah, will be held in about four days' time, at about ten miles distance.

As the Munthdeeguns passed their totem-marked trees, or images, which would be those of the boys in their charge—for each guardian was a relation of the same totem as his charge—they would perform some magical feat, such as producing gubberahs, charcoal, gypsum, and so on, uttering as they did so a little chant about that totem.

The boy's eyes are closed all this time and his head bent down.

Boys at a Boorah always remind me of WILHELM MEISLER'S TRAVELS, where, at the school to which Wilhelm takes Felix, he learns, on inquiry as to the three attitudes assumed by the pupils, that these gestures inculcate veneration, which also seems to be the keynote of the eeramooun's instruction. The Boorah over, he too, 'Stands erect and bold, yet not selfishly isolated; only in an union with his equals (his fellow initiates) does he present a front towards the world.'

And only when the fear, the abasement, is gone does the true reverence come, which makes the most primitive creed a living religion.

As the Munthdeeguns pass the sacred fire they throw in a weapon each. This done they place their charges in slightly scooped-out places, already prepared in the inner ring.

Then they bid them, on pain of death, not to look up whatever happens.

Soon a great whirring is heard, telling that Gayandi, the Boorah spirit, is near.

Yudtha Dulleebah, one of the oldest black men in the district, said at this stage once two boys did look up.

The wirreenuns saw them, though the boys did not know it and went on looking. These boys saw the men advance each to the fire where they had thrown their weapons; chanting in a strange tongue, they corroboreed round the fire for some time.

Then the wirreenuns snatched up the coals left from the weapons and rubbed them into their limbs, trampling as they did so on the edge of the fire, which did not seem to burn them, rubbing and chanting until the sacred coals were supposed to be absorbed by them, from which they would derive new powers.

This over, the boys were all ordered to get up, and march round, hands on thighs and heads abased, while they learnt a Boorah song, giving new words for common things, which acted as pass-words hereafter for the initiated. Into a slow chant these words were strung, as the men and boys passed round the ring, two of the oldest men standing beating time with painted spears with tufted tops.

The two boys who had transgressed before looked up again, curious as to their surroundings. Suddenly the men with the spears roared at the boys to lower their heads.

The boys laughed. Their fates were sealed. Out flashed the sacred gubberahs of these two old men.

'Dead is he,' they cried, 'who laughs in the Bunbul where yungawee burns more fiercely than Yirangal, the sun, where near lies the image of Byamee: Byamee, father of all, whose laws the tribes are now obeying.' Then the men chanted to the gubberahs and held them between the fires and the boys, the light of the flames seemed to play on them and stretch its beams to the boys, who began to tremble. As louder grew the chant an answer came from the scrub, the voice of Gayandi; shaking with fear the boys fell to the ground, to all appearance lifeless. Then the old men went forward, each with a stone knife in hand. Stooping over the two boys they opened veins in each, out flowed the blood, and the other men all raised a death cry. The boys were lifeless. The old wirreenuns, dipping their stone knives in the blood, touched with them the lips of all present. Then the bodies were put on the edge of the sacred fire and the other initiates taken a little further into the scrub. There they were tried in many ways.

With the Boorah spirits whistling and whizzing all round them, spears were pointed at them. Their skins were scratched with stone knives and mussel shells. Hideously painted, fiendish-looking creatures suddenly rushed upon them. Should they show fear and quail at the Little Boorah they would be returned to their mothers as cowards unfit for initiation, and sooner or later sympathetic magic would do its work, a poison-stick or bone would end them. Or if one of the initiates was considered stupid and generally incapable, having been brought to the Boorah for that purpose, he was now, after having been made to suffer all sorts of indignities, such as eating filth and so on, bound to the earth, strapped down, killed, and his body burnt.

When the trials were over and the old wirreenuns said to the boys who had not quailed, 'You are brave; you shall be boorahbayyi first and afterwards yelgidyi, and carry the marks that all may know.'

Then they made on the shoulder of each boy a round hole with a pointed stone; this hole they licked to feel no splinter of stone remained, then filled it with powdered charcoal.

After this, leaving the boys there, the men went back to the Bunbul ring. The bodies of the Boorah victims were cooked. Each man who had been to five Boorahs ate a piece of this flesh, no others were allowed even to see this done. Then the bones and what was left of the bodies were put into the middle of the fire, and all traces of the victims so destroyed.

The men then sang a song, saying that so must always be served those who scoffed at sacred things; that the strength they had wasted should go into other men who would use it better; while the spirits of the victims should wander about until reincarnated if the Boorah spirit gave them another chance. Perhaps he would only let them be reincarnated in animals.

After another dance and chant round the yungawee, the men went and brought the boys back again. They came with their hands on their thighs, and their heads abased; each was taken to his allotted place near the outer edge of the ring. There each Munthdeegun told his boy he could sleep that night; he would go to sleep the boy he had been, to wake in the morning a new man; his courage had now been tried, and in the morning a new name and a sacred stone would be given to him. The Gayandi would settle their names that night and tell the wirreenuns.

The next morning the boys were awakened by the Munthdeegun chanting and dancing before them. They stopped in front of the first boy, called him to rise by a new name; as he did so all the men clapped their thighs and shouted

'Wah! wah! wah!'

Then an old wirreenun gave him a small white gubberah, which he was bidden to keep concealed for ever from the uninitiated and the women, and he must be ready to produce it whenever called upon to do so. The result of failure would be fatal to him. With the loss of the stone his life spirit would be weakened, and the strength of the Boorah spirit, with which he was now endowed, be used against him instead of for him, as would be the case as long as he kept the stone.

These stones seem somewhat in the way of 'Baetyli' of pagan antiquity, which were of round form; they were supposed to be animated, by means of magical incantations, with a portion of the Deity; they were consulted on occasions of great and pressing emergency as a kind of divine oracle, and were suspended either round the neck or some other part of the body.

As each boy received his stone another loud chorus of 'Wah! wah! wah!' went up from that crowd, making the scrub ring with the sound.

Some of those, of whose tribe it was the custom—it is not invariably so—now had a front tooth knocked off; this done a wirreenun chanted to the boy, who had been blindfolded and almost deafened by the whirring of Gayandi.

One chant was as follows:—

Now you can meet the Boorah spirit, Now will he harm you not. He will know his spirit is in you. For this is the sign, A front tooth gone. That is his sign, He will know you by it.

Some of the wirreenuns buried these teeth by the Boorah fire, others carefully wrapped them up to keep as charms, or to send to other tribes, each according to the individual custom of his tribe.

This all over, once more there was a marching and chanting round the fire, then the boys were taken away and given food for the first time since they left their mothers.

No wonder that the 'supernatural' was mixed up with their impressions of the Boorah: fasting nourishes hallucinations. While the boys were eating, they could hear in the distance other chants, and knew that ceremonies were going on to which they were not yet to be admitted, there being degrees of initiation.

On the fourth day the men took them about ten miles, and camped with them where they could hear faintly in the distance the noise of the main camp; so they knew they were near the place chosen for the Durramunga, or Little Boorah.

Just before dawn next morning each Munthdeegun took his Boorahbayyi, or partially initiated one, to the Durramunga. There was a Boorah ring, but instead of earth grass was heaped all round it. No young women were visible, only the old women, who sang and corroboreed towards the boys. Slowly they came forward, peered at their shoulders, and seeing there the marks, embraced them, shrieking out cries of joy that their boys had borne the tests. They danced round them, then at a sign from the old men embraced them again; and while, the women sang their brumboorah and danced, the boys were taken away by their guardians.

For two moons they remained away, learning much as to sacred things. They were told that the oldest wirreenuns could see in their sacred crystals pictures of the past, pictures of what was happening at a distance in the present, and pictures of the future; some of which last filled their minds with dread, for they said as time went on the colours of the blacks, as seen in these magical stones, seemed to grow paler and paler, until at last only the white faces of the Wundah, or spirits of the dead, and white devils were seen, as if it should mean that some day no more blacks should be on this earth.

The reason of this must surely be that the tribes fell away from the Boorah rites, and in his wrath Byamee stirred from his crystal seat in Bullimah. He had said that as long as the blacks kept his sacred laws, so long should he stay in his crystal seat, and the blacks live on earth; but if they failed to keep up the Boorah rites as he had taught them, then he would move and their end would come, and only Wundah, or white devils, be in their country.

It is said that this prophetic vision was the reason that so many of the first-born half-caste babies were killed, the old wirreenuns seeing in them the beginning of the end.

At the end of two moons they make back towards the place where the Boorah had begun, and where preparations were now being made to receive them.

They camped in the scrub near the old camp of the tribe who had started the Boorah.

That night in the camp the Gayandi was heard again, another ceremony was at hand.

The next day the women at the big camp made a big fire, a little distance away. When this fire was nearly burnt out they covered it thickly with Budtha, Dheal, and Coolabah leaves to make a great smoke. On the top of these leaves, which were piled about two feet high, logs were placed; this fire was round a Dheal tree.

When the thick smoke was seen curling up in a column, the Boorahbayyi were brought out of the scrub by the Munthdeegun, while in the distance sounded the whizzing voice of the Boorah spirit. As it ceased, when the women's chanting rose above it, the painted boys came into the open. On they came, heads down and hands on thighs, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but walking straight ahead until they stood on the logs on the fire. They leaned over and placed a hand each on the tree in the centre, there they stood while the smoke curled all round them. The women past child-bearing were singing all the time, while the men danced outside the leaf-smoke, clicking boomerangs as they did so.

For some time this went on, then the men took the boys back into the scrub.

In about four moons' time another leaf-smoke was made ready, and the Boorahbayyi were again brought out and smoked. This time while chanting a song the old women brought a big net and put it right over the boys. Then they stepped back and danced round to the clicking of boomerangs by the men. The boys were again taken away.

But after this they were allowed to camp nearer the general camp, though they held no intercourse with the people of it. I have often met these Boorah boys in the bush, and on sighting me they have fled as if I were a devil in petticoats.

In about another moon's time, the boys were painted principally white, a waywah put on them, a yunbean—a piece of beefwood gum with two kangaroo teeth stuck in it, and a hole through it—was tied to their front lock of hair. A number of these yunbean were tied to forehead bands, which they wore too. Armlets of opossum's hair string were put on their arms, and feathers stuck in them. Feathers were also stuck upright in the forehead bands.

Some of the old men added to their own decorations by putting on wongins, from which were hanging those most precious possessions to inland blacks—seaside shells. Some had fresh beads of gum fastened on to their hair, hanging round their heads in dozens.

The women, too, had coiffured themselves with fresh gum beads; the mothers of the Boorahbayyi were painted, too, in corroboree style. They had made a smoke fire, but the logs instead of being put on it, were placed at a little distance; on these the painted boys sat, the smoke enveloping them.

After they had been seated there some time, their mothers came up behind them, and put their hands on their sons' shoulders. Then they rubbed all the paint off the boys' bodies; the boys never once looking at them. When the paint was all off, the women sang and danced, until the men in charge took the boys away again.

After this, supervision was relaxed except at night. During the day-time the boys might wander at will, so as they kept clear of the general camp. They might not receive food from nor speak to a woman for twelve months, as if they were monks of Byamee in training.

At his second Boorah a young man was allowed to see the sacred fire ceremony, throwing in of weapons, walking on burning coals, and the rest. He saw the huge earthen figures of Byamee, Birrahgnooloo, and Baillahburrah, or Dillalee, and was told all about them; that Byamee having initiated the Boorah, only such as have been through its rites can go to his sky-camp.

Three sins are unforgiveable, and commit a spirit of a guilty one to continual movement in the lower world of the Eleanbah Wundah, where, but for big fires kept up, would be darkness.

There the guilty one had to keep his right hand at his side, never moving it, but he himself perpetually moving. Those who know the blacks and their love of a 'dolce far niente,' will understand what a veritable hell this perpetual movement would make.

The three deadly sins were unprovoked murder, lying to the elders of the tribe, or stealing a woman within the forbidden degrees—that is, of the same hereditary totem, i.e. of the same blood, or of the prohibited family name clan.

But by a curious train of reasoning two wrongs make a right. Should by any chance a man succeed in getting a wife he had no right to, having lived with her, he could keep her, if he came unhurt from the trial he had to stand; he only having a shield to defend himself with, the men of the stolen woman's kin threw weapons at him. Only the men of her kin are assailants, not as in a murder trial, when the men of all kins can throw at the guilty man. Should he defend himself successfully, he can keep the woman on the understanding that a woman of his family is given to a man of hers, to square things. A man who stands his trial is called a Booreenbayyi.

Kindliness towards the old and sick is strictly inculcated as a command of Byamee, to whom all breaches of his laws are reported by the all-seeing spirit at a man's death, and he is judged accordingly. Sir Thomas Mitchell, writing in 1837 his experiences of the blacks during his explorations, notices as very striking their care and affection for the aged of their race.

At his second Boorah a man is allowed to see the carvings on the trees and to hear the legends of them. Also to hear the Boorah song of Byamee, which Byamee himself sang; and to hear the prayer of the oldest wirreenun to Byamee, asking him to let the blacks live long, for they have been faithful to his charge as shown by the observance of the Boorah ceremony.

The old wirreenun says words to this effect several times imploringly, his head turned to the east; facing this direction the dead are mostly buried.

Though we say that actually these people have but two attempts at prayers, one at the grave and one at the inner Boorah ring, I think perhaps we are wrong. These two seem the only ones directly addressed to Byamee. But perhaps it is his indirect aid which is otherwise invoked. Daily set prayers seem to them a foolishness and an insult, rather than otherwise, to Byamee. He knows; why weary him by repetition, disturbing the rest he enjoys after his earth labours? But a prayer need not necessarily be addressed to the highest god. I think if we really understood and appreciated the mental attitude of the blacks, we should find more in their so-called incantations of the nature of invocations. When a man invokes aid on the eve of a battle, or in his hour of danger and need; when a woman croons over her baby an incantation to keep him honest and true, and that he shall be spared in danger, surely these croonings are of the nature of prayers born of the same elementary frame of mind as our more elaborate litany. I fancy inherent devotional impulses are common to all races irrespective of country or colour.

When the prayer was over the old men chanted Byamee's song, which only the fully initiated may sing, and which an old black fellow chanted for us as the greatest thing he could do.

There seemed very little in this song, for no, one can translate it, the meaning having been lost in the 'dark backward,' if it was ever known to the Euahlayi.

'Byamee guadoun. Byamee guadoun. Byamee guadoun. Mungerh wirree. Mungerh wirree. Mungerh wirree. Birree gunyah, birrie gunyah. Dilbay gooran mulah bungarn. Oodoo doo gilah. Googoo wurra wurra. Bulloo than nulgah delah boombee nulgah. Delah boombee. Nulgah delah boombee boombee. Buddereebah . . . . . . Eumoolan. Dooar wullah doo. Boombee nulgah delah.'

The old fellow said wherever Byamee had travelled this song was known, but no one now knew the meaning of the whole, not even the oldest wirreenuns.

Another stone was given to a Boorahbayyi when he first heard this song.

The wirreenuns, they say, swallow their stones to keep them safe.

At each Boorah a taboo is taken off food. After a third Boorah a man could eat fish, after a fourth honey, after a fifth what he liked. He was then, too, shown and taught the meanings of the tribal message-sticks, and the big Boorah one of Byamee. As few men now have ever been to five Boorahs, few know anything about these last. At each Boorah a stone was given to a man, and when he had the five he could marry.

After each Boorah all the figures and embankments are destroyed.

After the fifth Boorah the mystery of the Gayandi was revealed and the bull roarers shown—oval pieces of wood pointed at both ends, fastened to a string and swung round; but though this was shown, the wirreenuns told them that the spirit's voice was really in this wood animating it. After a man has been to one Boorah he can have war weapons and is a warrior, but not until he has been to five can he join or be one of the dorrunmai—sort of chiefs—who hold councils of war, but have few privileges beyond being accepted authorities as to war and hunting. With the wirreenuns rests the real power, by reason of their skill in magic.

Besides Boorahs are minor corroboree meetings where marriages are arranged; meetings where the illegality of marriages is gone into, and, if necessary, exchanges effected or arranged; meetings where the wirreenuns of the Boogahroo produce the bags of hair, etc., and vendettas are sworn; meetings of Boodther, or giving, where each person receives and gives presents. A person who went to a Boodther without a goolay full of presents would be thought a very poor thing indeed.

Of course every meeting has a corroboree as part of it.

Every totem even has its own special corroboree and time for having it, as the Beewees, or iguanas, when the pine pollen is failing and the red dust-storms come. And if you abused these dust-storms to a Beewee black, you would insult him: it is not dust, it is the pollen off the pines, and so a multiplex totem to him!

The winds belong to various totems, and the rains are claimed by the totem whose wind it was that blew it up.

If a storm comes up without wind it belongs to Bohrah, the kangaroo.

The big mountainous clouds when they come from the south-west are said to be Mullyan, the eagle-hawk, who makes the south-west wind claimed by Maira, paddy melon totem, one of whose multiplex totems Mullyan is.

The crow keeps the cold west wind in a hollow log, as she was too fond of blowing up hurricanes; she escapes sometimes, but the crow hunts her back. But they say the log is rotting and she will get away yet, when there will be great wreckage and quite a change in climates. [Here we see the usual antagonism of crow and eagle-hawk.—A. L.]

Away to the north-west a tribe of blacks have almost a monopoly in wind-making, holding great corroborees to sing these hurricanes up. One of this tribe came to the station once and wanted to marry a girl there. She would not consent, and told him to go home. He went, threatening to send a storm to wreck the station. The storm came; the house escaped, but stable, store, and cellar were unroofed. I told my Black-but-Comelys to kindly avoid such vehemently revengeful lovers for the future.



CHAPTER X

CHIEFLY AS TO FUNERALS AND MOURNING

I was awakened one morning on the station by distant wailing.

A wailing that came in waves of sound, beginning slowly and lowly, to gain gradually in volume until it reached the full height or limit of the human voice, when gradually, as it had risen, it fell again. No shrieking, just a wailing inexpressibly saddening to hear.

I lay for some minutes not realising what the sound was, yet penetrated by its sorrow. Then came consciousness. It was from the blacks' camp, and must mean death. Beemunny, the oldest woman of the camp, who for weeks had been ill, must now be dead.

Poor old Beemunny, who was blind and used to get her great-granddaughter, little Buggaloo, to lead her up to the tree outside my window, under whose shade she had spent so many hours, telling me legends of the golden age when man, birds, beasts, trees, and elements spoke a common language. But the day before I had been to the camp to hear how she was. The old women were sitting round her; one of the younger ones told me her end had nearly come.

The Boolees, or whirlwinds, with the Mullee Mullees of her enemies in, had been playing round and through the camp for days, they said, watching to seize her fleeting spirit—a sure sign the end was near. That night surely would come Yowee, the skeleton spirit, with the big head and fiery eyes, whose coming meant death.

Last night more than one of the blacks had dreamt of an emu, which meant misfortune to one of that totem, which was Beemunny's.

As Yellen spoke in a hushed sad voice, suddenly, though no breath of wind was stirring, sprang up on the edge of the camp a boolee, rearing its head as if it were a living thing. Round it whirled, snatching the dead leaves of the Coolabahs, swirling them with the dust it gathered into a spiral column, which sped, as if indeed a spirit animated it, straight to the camp of the dying woman. Round and round it eddied, a dust-devil dancing a dance of death.

The watchers drew nearer to Beemunny, who was past heeding even the spirits of evil.

The women in other camps clutched their children to them, but spoke no word. All was silent but the swirling leaves as the column gathered them. Finding the deathbed guarded, the boolee turned sharply from the camp and sped away down the road, dissolving on the poligonum flat in the distance.

Yellen gave a sigh of relief.

But now her fears were verified; Beemunny was dead.

Poor old Beemunny! How the vanities of youth cling to one; how we are 'all sisters under the skin.'

She was ever so old, she was blind, her face was scarred with wrinkles, yet one of her beauties remained, and she absolutely joyed in its possession: it was her hair. Her hair was thick and fuzzy, when combed would stand nearly straight out, which is quite unusual with the native women's hair in that part. Beemunny one day asked one of the younger women if I had ever heard what a lot of lovers she had had in her youth, what fights there had been over her, and all because of her beautiful hair.

Poor old Beemunny! Something in my own woman nature went out to her in sympathy. She was old, she was ugly, her husband was dead, as were all men to her.

Poor old Beemunny! Having once learnt her vanity, I never passed her without saying 'Gubbah Tekkul!' 'Beautiful hair!' at which she would beam and toss her head.

At sunrise came again the wailing; the singing of the Goohnai, or dirge, wherein are enumerated all the multiplex totems of the deceased, crooned in a wailing way, and each fresh person who comes to the camp sings this dirge again. In olden times all would have been painted in full war paint, weapons in hand, to see the corpse.