The Euahlayi Tribe: A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia

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.