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MORE AUSTRALIAN
LEGENDARY TALES

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hi

By the same Author and Publisher

Australian Legendary Tales

3S. 6d.

SOME PRESS NOTICES
Saturday Review. — " Mrs. Parker has added to
the gaiety of nations by this collection of Antipo-
dean legends."

Antiquary. — " Extremely interesting and
curious."

Church Re-view. — "To the ethnologist and folk-
lorist this book is of great value, but its main use
will probably be to provide new and original fairy
tales for the juveniles."

Sydney Morning Herald. — "Mrs. Parker has
striven, and not unsuccessfxiUy, to do for Australian
folk-lore what Longfellow did in ' Hiawatha ' for
the North American tribes. "

MORE AUSTRALIAN

Legendary Tales

COLLECTED FROM VARIOUS TRIBES Br

Mrs. K. LANGLOH PARKER

AUTHOR OF
AUSTRALIAN LEGENDARY TALES

WITH INTRODUCTION Br

ANDREW LANG, M.A.

IVITH ILLUSTRATION'S BV A NATIVE ARTIST

LONDON

DAVID NUTT, 270-271, STRAND

MELBOURNE

MELVILLE, MULLEN & SLADE

1898

" And he told me in a vision of the night :
There are nine and sixty -ways of constructing tribal lays.
And every one of them is right !'"

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DEDICATED
TO

THE EUAHLAYI-SPEAKING PEOPLE

IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF THEIR

EVER-WILLING ASSISTANCE IN

MY FOLK-LORE QUEST

Cornell University
Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029909086

Contents

PREFACE . . . ix

INTRODUCTION, BY ANDREW LANG, M.A. . . . . . xvii

THE CRANE AND THE CROW . . ■ . . . I

BEEREEUN THE MIRAGE MAKER 3

BOHRAH THE KANGAROO AND DINEWAN THE EMU ... I3

GHEEGER GHEEGER, THE COLD WEST WIND . . . . I5

BILBER AND MAYRAH . . . . . . I9

BRALGAH THE DANCING BIRD . . . ... 21

HOW THE SUN WAS MADE . . ... 28

STURI'S DESERT PEA, THE BLOOD FLOWER . . . . 3I

PIGGIEBILLAH THE PORCUPINE . . 39

GAYARDAREE THE PLATYPUS . 41

HOW MDNGGHEE, OR MUSSELS, WERE BROUGHT TO THE CREEKS . 45

WURRUNNAH's TRIP TO THE SEA 49

WALLOOBAHL THE BARK LIZARD .... -55

GOOLAYYAHLEE THE PELICAN 57

MUNGOONGARLEE THE IGUANA AND OUYOUBOOLOOEY THE BLACK

SNAKE , 61

WAYAMBEH THE TURTLE AND WOGGOON THE TURKEY ... 68

WHERE THE FROST COMES FROM 73

Vlll

Contents

EUBBURR THE GIANT BROWN AND YELLOW SNAKE

THE YOUAYAH MAYAMAH, OR STONE FROGS

A LEGEND OF THE FLOWERS

THE FROG HERALDS OF THE FLOOD .

EERIN, THE SMALL GREY OWL

THE LEGEND OF NAR-OONG-OWIE, THE SACRED ISLAND
GLOSSARY . ■ • .

76

79
84
90
93
99
loi

P r e f a c e

I MUST begin the preface to a new series of Australian
Legendary Tales by thanking the press and public for the,
to the collector, gratifying reception they gave the first one.
There are many persons who have individually expressed
their interest in my work so kindly that I would like to
name them here and publicly thank them, but some of them
are of such world-wide fame that to do so might seem a
mere self-advertisement at their expense. Should this
come under their notice, they will, I hope, understand my
reticence, and accept my gratitude.

The present series of legends have all been collected by
myself from the Blacks, as were the previous ones. But
in this instance I had much help given to me by friends,
who either told or sent me scraps of legends they themselves
had seen or heard. On receiving any such I immediately
made inquiries amongst the Blacks, and I was often enabled
to complete the scraps, gaining through their hints a whole
legend. For should the local tribes know nothing of what
I wanted to hear, I would get them to make inquiries of
wandering Blacks from other tribes whom they might meet
during their periodic " walk-abouts," or at corroborees they
attended. I myself have had opportunities of knowing well
members, of nine tribes, though that which I know best is

X Preface

the Euahlayi-speaking one, of which the Noongahburrahs
are a branch.

As far as I know, only one of the legends in this series
has previously been printed entire. This is one of my own
collecting from a Wiradjari black fellow, "The Crane and
the Crow," and appeared in the Sydney Bulletin.

Some of the Blacks who have helped to build up this
series belong to the Murrumbidgee, Darling, Barwon,
Paroo, Warrego, Narran, Culgoa and Castlereagh rivers ;
the Braidwood, Yass, Narrabri, and other districts of New
South Wales ; to the Balonne, Maranoa, Condamine, Barcoo,
Mulligan rivers, and the Gulf country in Queensland. But
I have confined myself as far as possible to the Noongah-
burrah names, thinking it would create confusion if I used
those of each dialect — several different names, for example,
for one bird or beast. To such as were told in song I
have tried to retain something of the rhythmical rendering.
I have no doubt a skilled writer could have mosaicked these
legendary scraps with flowery language into a beautiful
work of art, but I have preferred to let the Blacks as far as
possible tell their legends in their own way, only adding
such explanations as seemed necessary to make them clear
to the English reader.

I trust the fact that these legends belong to a stone age,
an age when everything was rough hewn, will not be lost
sight of by readers. Ever since I have been collecting
folk-lore I have endeavoured to keep as many of the
"coloured people " about me as I could in various capacities,
even going the length that " Uncle Remus's " creator did,
namely, of " at times sacrificing digestion to sentiment," the
practical result of which has been that many scraps of folk-

Preface

XI

lore were revealed to me of which, but for this daily inter-
course, I should probably never have heard. For instance,
a young Bootha brought in the lamp one evening ; seeing
some big grey moths fluttering round it she said : " No
good, Comebeegeeboon darngliealdah, no tomahawks here ;
you'll get burnt for nothing." Then I learnt that the spirits
send these grey moths as soon as it is dark to the camps
to steal tomahawks for them. The bag-like back of their
bodies is supposed to be the comebee (bag) they carry these
in if they get them, but most often they are dazzled by the
light of the fires, and blindly flutter into them, getting
singed as they do round the lamp.

While walking through the bush after heavy rain, I came
across some very brilliant fungi, growing on to dead trees.
I picked off a piece, and on my return, going out to speak
to some of the Blacks, I carried this fungus in my hand. A
little black child, seeing its bright colour, came towards me
as if to get it, but his mother quickly interposed, saying in
an alarmed tone : " Don't let him touch it. It is way-way.
Don't let him touch it." Then she told me that all fungi
growing on trees were the bread of ghosts, and if a child
touched any he would be spirited away by the ghosts.
She said these fungi were luminous at night so that the
ghosts could see them.

Walking through the bush, as I often do, with some of
the Blacks, I hear many httle scraps. Quite lately, while
going along the edge of one of the plains we put up some
spur-winged plover, who went off harshly screeching. I
asked why the bird had that strange spur. Because,
they said, a long time ago, a black fellow called Bahl-
durrahdurrah, as the plovers are now, had been noted for

xii Preface

never going abroad without poison-tipped spears, from
which even a scratch was fatal. When he died he was
turned into a plover, and has his spears still, in the modified
form of the spurs on the wings ; he brings these forward
if he wishes to injure anything, holding it between them,
with fatal result.

On similar occasions I learnt that when the sun, as it
sometimes does in summer, goes down like a fiery red ball,
it is the reflection of wattle gum on it that makes it so
bright. After such a sunset, if they go out for gum, they
are certain to find quantities/ they say. The gum they melt
in water, making it into a half liquid jelly which they eat
with relish, and which they say has great strengthening
properties. That when the moon looks very yellow after it
has risen on a winter's evening, it is a sign of frost. "The
Meamei have told Bahloo they will send frost to-night. He
is going to keep himself warm ; look at his bright fire,"
they say.

When they see a tree that usually grows on the plains
on the ridges, or vice versa, they sa}' : " There are two
who have married wrongly ; that Coolabah must have run
away from her tribe with a Bibbil. And now the wirree-
nuns, or wizards, have turned them into trees."

I often come in contact with instances of their deeply
ingrained superstitions. One morning a very fine healthy
specimen of a young native woman was scrubbing the
verandahs. As I passed her, she said, " I might die soon,
Innerah." (They call me Innerah in the sense of boss-
woman.) On inquiry I found some young man whom she
had declined to marry had stolen a lock of her hair, and
was now making his way with it to the wirreenuns of the

Preface

Xlll

Boogahroo. Should he reach them and they agree to burn
it, she would die. There was some hope for her, she said ;
her totem clan, the Beewees, were very strong out that way,
and, having been warned, might intercept him. Should he
succeed in causing her death, so long as any of her tribe
were alive they would be at enmity with his, and the feud
would go on from generation to generation.

Another day a girl came to borrow a horse to go down
the river to see her sister, whose baby, a messenger had
just come to tell her, was dead. She went, and on her
return I asked if the baby were buried. She told me the
wirreenuns had put its breath back in it and it was alive
again. On my doubting that it had been really dead, she
brought two or three witnesses to corroborate her story,
and they described how the two wirreenuns had caught
the breath just after it left the body, put it back through
the child's mouth, and then set to work to suck the
sickness out of the body, with the result that the baby
recovered.

It was in the summer of 1896, when the six weeks of a
heat wave caused so many deaths in this district from heat
apoplexy, that the Blacks first saw Marmbeyah, the ghost
with the green boondee, about here. The next summer I
said one day to a black woman that I hoped we should not
hear of so many deaths that season. " Oh no," she said,
" there won't be any this year because a black fellow has
killed Marmbeyah, who caused the deaths by knocking the
people on the back of their necks with his green boondee."
The black fellow is supposed to have seen this evil-dealing
ghost in front of him one day, he himself being unobserved,
when he stole up and flattened him with his boondee, thus

xiv Preface

saving his people and the whites from further sickness c
the heat apoplexy kind. We have in the camp an ol
woman who is supposed to call up spirits — and they d
come. She gave us a test of her power one day, which
am bound to say compared favourably with any seances c
a like nature I had seen before, inasmuch as she held her
in the light of day. She never drinks hot tea nor any soi
of hquid which would heat her internally ; did she do sc
she says the spirits would be driven out and she be power
less as a medium of communication with them ; it is, sh
says, because the black people drink the " grog " of th
white people they are losing their ancient power ; in th
past they never drank any hot hquid.

It was the same old woman who accurately foretold th<
breaking up of a drought. The oldest woman of this tribi
having died, was buried the next day. The Blacks told mi
I could go to the funeral, and on the way the old spiritualis
walked beside me. Seeing the droughty desolation of th(
country, I asked her when she thought it would rain again
Coming very close to me, she half whispered, " In thret
days I think it ; old Beemunny tell me when she dying tha
s'posing she can send 'im rain, she sent 'im three day, wher
her yowee go long a Oobi Oobi." Beemunny died or
Wednesday night, and we went to bed on Saturday with
the skies as cloudless as they had been for weeks ; in the
middle of the night we were awakened by the patter ol
raindrops on the iron roof. All night it rained and all the
next day.

Since my first series came out I have heard some items
which more fitly complete four of the legends in it, which
completions I now add. To " Mullyangah the Morning

Preface

XV

Star"* might be added that under the tree in which Mullyan's
gahreemay or camp was, the spring of water which was
there then is still so, and from time to time it throws up
various sorts of mammoth and strange bones belonging to a
past age, which the Blacks say are the remains of Mullyan's
many victims, whose bones were dropped from the tree into
this spring, called Guddee, which is in the Brewarrina
district.

To "The Galah and Oolah the Lizard,"t some Blacks add
that the present colouring of the bird, grey and rose-pink,
is owing to her having rolled in the dust as the blood
streamed down both sides of her head from the wound the
bubberah, thrown by Oolah, had made, staining for ever her
breast and underpart of her wings, the dust toning the
blood-red down to rose-pink.

It is to the legend of " Mooregoo the Mopoke, and Bahloo
the Moon,"| that we owe a black fellow's reason for a halo
round the moon. Ever since the storm in that legend when
Bahloo built himself a dardurr, he has done so before rain.
Seeing a halo the Blacks.say, " Bahloo has built his dardurr,
there will be rain."

To " Deereeree the Wagtail and the Rainbow "§ they add
that Bibbee, who made the Euloowirree or rainbow, put
snakes at its end to guard it, and if any one goes near it,
these savage flat-headed snakes will kill them.

The former series were all such legends as are told to
the black piccaninnies ; among the present are some they
would not be allowed to hear, touching as they do on sacred
subjects, taboo to the young.

" Australian Legendary Tales," p. 6i. t Ibid. p. 6.

% Hid. p. 68. § Ibid. p. 83.

xvi Preface

The Legend of Nar-oong-owie, the Sacred Island, was
not heard directly by myself from the Blacks, but was first
told to me, when a child, by my grandmother, and was
sent recently to me by my uncle in much the same form,
having been told to him by a full-blooded aboriginal ol
Southern South Australia.

To the legend of " Dinewan the Emu, and Whan the
Crows," some natives add that when Dinewan's wives (the
crows) threw the hot coals over him his wings were burnt off,
and that singed appearance which has been theirs ever since
given to the feathers where the stumps of the wings are.

K. LANGLOH PARKER.

Bangate, Narran River,

New South Wales,

September 1898.

Introduction

Mrs. Langloh Parker has requested me to write a little
" fore-word " to her new collection of AustraHan popular
tales. " Good wine," like these stories, " needs no bushy"
and Mrs. Parker's intimate knowledge of the bush and its
wild native lords cannot be improved by any merely
literary information. Yet one would not willingly dis-
oblige a lady to whom children owe so much for her
legends, and who has so remarkably vindicated the
thoroughly ' human and amiable character of an unfortu-
nate people.

These dark backward friends of hers, " the blacks," are,
we find, " very much like you and me," as Mr. Kipling says,
or rather they are our superiors in poetical fancy. With-
out our savage ancestors we should certainly have had no
poetry. Conceive the human race born into the world in
its present advanced condition, weighing, analysing, ex-
amining everything, except a few phenomena which happen
not to chime in with the general ideas of science. Such a
race would have been destitute of poetry and flattened by
common sense. The world would never have been "dis-
peopled of its dreams," because there would have been no

n^

xviii Introduction

dreamers. Barbarians did the dreaming for the world,
poetry arose in their fancies, and poetry, in spite of
facts and science, resolutely refuses to " follow dark-
ness like a dream." Mrs. Parker's collection demonstrates
that, among the world's dreamers, the Australians, just
escaping from the Palaeolithic age, were among the most
distinguished.

On many points we need further information. It is
commonly said that the Biraarks, or native necromants,
have disappeared. But Mrs. Parker has seen one, a woman,
whose call the spirits obey, and who, like D. D. Home,
works her marvels in open day. We have had no account
of an Australian, though we have several accounts of Maori,
Guiana and Red Indian seances. One hopes that Mrs.
Parker will fill up the lacuna with a detailed report of her
own observations, to which she briefly refers. Anthro-
pology has no reason for neglecting these affairs any more
than the countless other things in which savage practice
tallies with the mysticisms of civilisation.

Many of the myths are setiological — they account for
origins. The tales of the " West Wind," of " The Mirage
Maker," of "The Blood Flowers," and others, are highly
poetical. Ovid would have found in them excellent material
for more Metamorphoses. The girl who " sang new songs,
which she said the spirits taught her," merely gave the
animistic explanation of her own genius. "Their voices
come to me on every breeze," as to the girl of Domremi.
The stories are tender with human affection.

Introduction xix

These are interesting traits for the student of animism,
as when Piggiebillah sleeps on his face that his doowee,
or dream spirit, may not -leave him as he slumbers. Wur-
runnah is eager to know "where Byamee (Baiame) is,"
the Good Being who made and instructed mankind ; who has
withdrawn to heaven which is His home, leaving laws not to
be broken. We see the black seeking after God, if perhaps
he may find Him, dreaming the great dream of the universal
Father, the friend of righteousness (as it is understood
by the tribes), who receives His children into everlasting
habitations. Byamee is at once the god and the culture
hero in these myths. He made the " stone fisheries,"
which Mr. Gideon Scott Lang, many years ago, described
to me as the only material evidence of a time of more
organisation and enterprise among the blacks than now
exist.

The " Legend of the Flowers " is the most important
example of the Byamee creed in this volume. The flowers
all followed Byamee, when he retired from earth and went
to BuUimah, the land of rest. I cannot persuade myself
that Byamee and BuUimah are echoes of Christian teaching.
Waitz has rejected that idea, and I see no evidence that we
"white devils" have largely influenced native belief. These
stories reflect human hopes and the world's desire, things
natural, untaught, inevitable. : The All Seeing Spirit is here
distinguished from Byamee; but in Mr. Howitt's accounts;
Durumulun (another name for the same conception) can
himself see and hear everything. Byamee has spirits who

XX Introduction

do his bidding, such as Wallahgooroonbooan, whose voice
is heard through the gayandy (the Tundan or Rule Roarer ?).
Byamee is now (like the Fijian Ndegei) " fixed and frozen
to permanence " on his crystal rock in the land of rest.
The souls of those who keep his law go to him, the wicked
go to Eleanbah Wundah, the native Inferno. All this is in
direct contradiction to the odd theory that morals, among
low savages, have no religious sanction. That theory
cannot long resist the impact of accumulating evidence. We
are, in truth, all alike, and from an unknown antiquity the
Maker of men has also been their Judge.

I have elsewhere argued (in " The Making of Religion")
that such beings as Byamee are not the ghosts of an
aincestor carried to the highest power. Ancestor worship I
do not discover in Australia. Mr. Dawson reports that the
habit of ghost-feeding (the supposed origin of religion) is
"recent," and that the blacks call it "white fellows'
gammon."*

Mr. Dawson found a deity called Pirnmeheal, a good being.
" The aborigines say that the missionaries and government
.protectors have given them a dread of Pirnmeheal ; and
they are sorry that the young people, and many of the old,
are now afraid of a being who never did any harm to their
forefathers." Mr. Dawson received his information in the
native languages, and sifted it- carefully. We have seen
what he regards as the result of the teaching of the white
devils, missionaries and others.

* " Australian Aborigines,'" pp. 50, 51. Melbourne. 1881

Introduction xxi

If he is right, if " providing food for it " (the corpse or
ghost) is a recent custom, what becomes of Mr, Herbert
Spencer's theory ?

If Mr. Dawson is right in Australia we surprise religion
already possessed of a God on his way to be otiose.
Byamee sits like Keats's

" Grey-hair'd Saturn quiet as a stone ; "

and Pirnmeheal is seldom mentioned. Elsewhere Durumulun
is served in the secret rites of the mysteries ; none of
these gods receive food or sacrifice. Religion is at this
point, and is' only just beginning to turn towards animism.
Corpse-feeding is recent. In Mrs. Parker's book Byamee
is implored to receive the soul of Eerin. " For Eerin was
faithful on earth, faithful to the laws you left us." The
mourners " let their blood drop into his grave," but
such a sacrifice is not necessarily more than a tribute
of affectionate regret. It need not imply feeding, while
of later sacrifices to spirits I have vainly looked for a
trace. Now, by a mythical inconsistency, the spirit of
Eerin (or one of his spirits, perhaps his doowee) dwells in
a grey owl.

Here, then, is a kind of theism, and beside it only the
germs of an animism which is not yet a religion of service
and propitiation of ancestors.

This helps my argument (that theism is not the latest
flower of animism) very well, and Mr. Dawson (as far as
'his evidence attests) has no theory to prove or disprove.

xxii Introduction

Mrs. Parker has, in MS., a considerable body of evidence
as to both the religion and the mythology of Byamee. I
have maintained, in this case, on the evidence of Mr.
Howitt, an initiate, that rehgion and mythology represent
quite different moods of men. In religion, the Australian
is serious, and will not mention " The Master " except at
the solemn mysteries. In mythology, he is either curious,
when making fanciful explanations of facts, or he is romantic
and humorous, telling stories for pleasure about Byamee or
Durumulun, whom he now envisages, not as Father and
Judge, but very much as a black fellow like himself.
Grant such a black fellow unlimited power, and he will
frolic as in the Australian and other mythologies. Con-
sider him as the maker and lawgiver, the all-seeing witness
and rewarder of conduct, and Byamee or Durumulun is no
longer the wanton, gigantic wirreenun; rather is he God. I
am unable to see any inconsistency between my notion of a
kind of early theism, and my belief that many of the
absurdities of mythology are the result, and (in civilisation)
the survival, of the savage intellectual condition. Odd
stories enough about Our Lord, the Virgin, and the Saints
occur in our European folk-lore. These are mythical
popular accretions, like the similar tales about Byamee.
But neither our creed nor that of the Australians began in
buffoonery. To these themes, and to a wider and more
minute examination of Australian religion, I hope some day
to return. Meanwhile the literary merit of the tales
collected by Mrs. Parker may teach us not to be surprised

Introduction xxiii

by traces of elevated thought and morality in the religious

traditions of this people, so low in the scale of culture that

no remains of the rudest pottery have been discovered in

the soil of the continent.

ANDREW LANG.

The Crane and the Crow

The crane was a great fisherman. He used to hunt out
the fish, with his feet, from underneath the logs in the
creek, and so catch numbers.

One day when he had a great many on the bank of the
creek, a crow, who was white at that time, came up. He
asked the crane to give him some fish.

" Wait a while," said the crane, " until they are
cooked."

But the crow was hungry and impatient, and would not
cease bothering the crane, who kept saying, " Wait.
Wait."

Presently the crane turned his back. The crow
sneaked up and was just going to steal a fish. The crane
turned round, saw him, seized a fish, and hit the crow
right across the eyes with it. The crow felt blinded for
a few minutes. He fell on the burnt black grass round
the fire, and rolled over and over in his pain. When he
got up to go away his eyes were white, and the rest of him
black, as crows have been ever since.

The crow was determined to pay out the crane for
having given him white eyes and a black skin.

2 More Australian Tales

So he watched his chance, and one day when he saw
the crane fast asleep, he crept quietly up to him holding a
fish-bone. This he stuck right across the root of the
crane's tongue.

Then he went off as quietly as he had come ; careful,
for once, to make no noise.

The crane woke up at last, and when he opened his
mouth to yawn he felt like choking. He tried to get the
obstruction out of his throat. In the effort he made a
queer scraping noise, which was all he could give utterance
to. The bone stuck fast.

And to this day the only noise a crane can make is,
" gah-rah-gah, gah-rah-gah ! " This noise gives the name
by which he is known to the blacks.

Beereeun the Mirage Maker

Beereeun the lizard wanted to marry BuUai BuUai the
green parrot sisters. But they did not want to marry him.
They liked Weedah the mocking-bird better. Their mother
said they must marry Beereeun, for she had pledged them
to him at their births, and Beereeun was a great wirreenun
and would harm them if they did not keep her pledge.

When Weedah came back from hunting they told him
what their mother had said, how they had been pledged to
Beereeun, who now claimed them.

"To-morrow," said Weedah, "old Beereeun goes to
meet a tribe coming from the Springs country. While he
is away we will go towards the Big River, and burn the
track behind us. I will go out as if to hunt as usual in
the morning. I will hide myself in the thick Gidya scrub.
You two must follow later and meet me there. We will
then cross the big plain where the grass is now thick and
dry. Bring with you a firestick ; we will throw it back
into the plain, then no one can follow our tracks. On we
will go to the Big River ; there I have a friend who has a
goombeelgah, or canoe, then shall we be safe from pursuit,
for he will put us over the river. And we can travel on

4 More Australian Tales

and on even to the country of the short-armed people if so
we choose."

The next morning ere Gougourgahgah had ceased his
laughter, Weedah had started.

Some hours later, in the Gidya scrub, the BuUai BuUai
sisters joined him.

Having crossed the big plain they threw back a firestick,
where the grass was thick and dry. The fire sped quickly
through it, crackling and throwing up tongues of flame.

Through another scrub went the three, then across
another plain, through another scrub and on to a plain
again.

The day was hot ; Yhi the sun was high in the sky.
They became thirsty, but saw no water, and had brought
none in their haste.

"We want water," the BuUai Bullai cried.

" Why did you not bring some ? " said Weedah.

"We thought you had plenty, or would travel as the
creeks run, or at least know of a goolahgool, or water-
holding tree."

" We shall soon reach water. Look even now ahead,
there is water."

The Bullai Bullai looked eagerly towards where he pointed,
and there in truth, on the far side of the plain, they saw a sheet
of water. They quickened their steps, but the further they
went, the further off seemed the water, but on they went
ever hoping to reach it. Across the plain they went, only
to find on the other side a belt of timber, the water had
gone.

The weary girls would have lain down, but Weedah
said that they would surely reach water on the other side

Beereeun the Mirage Maker 5

of the wood. Again they struggled on through the scrub
to another plain.

" There it is ! I told you so ! There is the water."
And looking ahead they again saw a sheet of water.
Again their hopes were raised, and though the sun beat
fiercely on them they marched, only to be again disap-
pointed.

"Let us go back," they said. "This is the country of
evil spirits. We see water, and when we come where we
have seen it there is but dry earth. Let us go back."
" Back to Beereeun, who would kill you ? "
" Better to die from the blow of a boondee in your own
country than of thirst in a land of devils. We will go
back."

" Not so. Not with a boondee would he kill you, but
with a gooweera, or poison stick. Slow would be your
deaths, and you would be always in pain until your shadow
was wasted away. But why talk of returning ? Did we
not set fire to the big plain ? Could you cross that ?
Waste not your breaths, but follow me. See, there again
is water ! "

But the Bullai Bullai had lost hope. No longer would
they even look up, though time after time Weedah called
out, " Water ahead of us ! Water ahead of us ! " only to
again, and again, disappoint them.

At last the Bullai Bullai became so angry with him that
they seized him and beat him. But even as they beat him
he cried all the time, " Water is there ! Water is there ! "
Then he implored them to let him go, and he would drag
up the roots from some water-trees and drain the water
from these for them.

6 More Australian Tales

"Yonder I see a coolabah ; from its roots I can drain
enough to quench your thirst. Or here beside us is a
bingahwingul; full of water are its roots. Let me go; I
will drain them for you."

But the BuUai Bullai had no faith in his promises, and
they but beat him the harder until they were exhausted.
When they ceased to beat him and let him go, Weedah
went on a little way, then lay down, feeling bruised all
over, and thankful that the night had come and the fierce
sun no longer scorched them.

One Bullai Bullai said to her sister : " Could we not
,sing the song our Bargie used to sing, and make the rain
fall ? "

" Let us try if we can make a sound with our dry
throats," said the other.

" We will sing to our cousin Dooloomai the Thunder ;
he will hear us, and break a rain cloud for us."

So they sat down, rocking their bodies to and fro, and,
beating their knees, sang :

" Moogary, Moogaray, May May,
Eehu, Eehu, Doongairah."

Over and over again they sang these words as they had
heard their Bargie, or grandmother, do. Then for them-
selves they added :

" Eehu oonah wambaneah Dooloomai
Bullul goonung inderh gingnee
Eehu oonah wambaneah Dooloomai."

Which meant :

" Give us rain, Thunder, our cousin,
Thirsting for water are we.
Give us rain, Thunder, our cousin."

Beereeun the Mirage Maker 7

As long as their poor parched throats could make a
sound they sang this. Then they lay down to die, weary
and hopeless. One said faintly : " The rain will be too
late, but surely it is coming, for strong is the smell of the
Gidya."

" Strong indeed," said the other. But even this sure sign
to their tribe that rain is near roused them not ; it would
come, they thought, too late for them. But even then away
in the north a thundercloud was gathering. It rolled across
the sky quickly, peahng out thunder calls as it came to tell of
its coming. It stopped right over the plain in front of the
Bullai BuUai. One more peal of thunder, which opened
the cloud, then splashing down came the first big drops of
rain. Slowly and few they came until just at the last,
when a quick, heavy shower fell, emptying the thunder-
cloud, and filling the gilguy holes on the plain.

The cool splashing of the rain on their hot, tired limbs
gave new life to the Bullai Bullai and Weedah. They all
ran to the gilguy holes. Stooping their heads, they drank
and quenched their thirst.

" I told you the water was here," said Weedah, " You
see I was right."

" No water was here when you said so. If our cousin
Dooloomai had not heard our song for his help we should
have died, and you too."

And they were angry. But Weedah dug them some
roots, and when they ate they forgot their anger. When
their meal was over they lay down to sleep.

The next morning on they went again. That day they
again saw across the plains the same strange semblance
of water which had lured them on before. They knew

8 More Australian Tales

not what it could be, only they knew that it was not
water.

Just at dusk they came to the Big River. There they
saw Goolayyahlee the pelican, with his canoe. Weedah
asked him to put them over on to the other side. He said
he would do so one at a time, as the canoe was small.
First he said he would take Weedah, that he might get
ready a camp of the long grass in the bend of the river.
He took Weedah over. Then back he came and, fastening
his canoe, he went up to the BuUai BuUai, who were sitting
beside the remains of his old fire.

"Now," said Goolayyahlee, "you two will go with me
to my camp, which is down in that bend. Weedah cannot
get over again. You shall hve with me. I shall catch fish
to feed you. I have some even now in my camp cooking.
There, too, have I wirrees of honey, and durrie but ready
for the baking. Weedah has nothing to give you but the
grass nyunnoos he but now is making."

" Take us to Weedah," they said.

" Not so," said Goolayyahlee, and he stepped forward as
if to seize them.

The Bullai Bullai stooped, filled their hands with the
white ashes of the burnt-out fire, which they flung at him.

Handful after handful they threw at him, until he stood
before them white, all but his hands, which he spread out
and shook, thus freeing them from the cloud of ashes
enveloping him and obscuring his sight.

Having thus checked him, the Bullai Bullai ran to the
bank of the river, meaning to get the canoe and cross over
to Weedah.

But in the canoe, to their horror, was Beereeun ! — Beer-

Beereeun the Mirage Maker 9

eeun, to escape whom they had sped across plain and
through scrub.

Yet here he was, while between them and Weedah lay
the wide river.

They had not known it, but Beereeun had been near
them all the while. He it was who had made the mirage
on each plain, thinking he would lure them on by this
semblance of water until they perished of thirst. From
that Dooloomai, their cousin, had saved them. But now
the chance of Beereeun had come.

The Bullai Bullai looked across the wide river and saw
the nyunnoos Weedah had made. They saw him running
in and out of them as if he were playing a game, not
thinking of them at all. Strange nyunnoos they were too
having both ends open.

Seeing where they were looking, Beereeun said : " Wee-
dah is womba, deaf. I stole his doowee while he slept and
put in its place a mad spirit. He knows naught of you
now. He cares naught for you. It is so with those who
look too long at the Eer-dheer, or mirage. He will trouble
me no more, nor you. Why look at him ? "

But the Bullai Bullai could not take their eyes from
Weedah, so strangely he went on, unceasingly running in
at one end of the grass nyunnoos, through it and out of the
other.

" He is womba," they said, but yet they could not under-
stand it. They looked towards him and called to him, though
he heeded them not.

" I will send him far from you," said Beereeun getting
angry. He seized a spear, stood up in the canoe, and
sent it swiftly through the air into Weedah, who gave a

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great cry, screamed " Water is there ! Water is there ! " and
fell back dead.

" Take us over ! Take us over ! " cried the Bullai Bullai.
"We must go to him, we might yet save him."

"He is all right. He is in the sky. He is not there,"
said Beereeun. " If you want him you must follow him
to the sky. Look, you can see him there now." And he
pointed to a star which the Bullai Bullai had never seen
before.

"There he is, Womba."

Across to the grass nyunnoos the Bullai Bullai looked,
but no Weedah was there. Then they sat down and wailed
a death song, for they knew well they should see Weedah no
more. They plastered their heads with white ashes and
water ; they tied on their bodies green twigs ; then, cutting
themselves till the blood ran, they lit some smoke branches
and smoked themselves, as widows.

Beereeun spoke to Goolayyahlee the pelican, saying :
" There is no brother of the dead man to marry these
women. In this country they have no relation. You shall
take one, and I the other. To-night when they sleep we
will each seize one."

" That which you say shall be," said Goolayyahlee the
pelican.

But the sisters heard what they said, though they
gave no sign and mourned the degd Wedeah without
ceasing. And with their death song they mingled a cry to
all of their tribe who were dead to help them, and save
them from these men who would seize them while
they were still mourning, before they had swallowed the
smoke-water, or their tribe had heard the voice of their

Beereeun the Mirage Maker ii

dead. As the night wore on, the wailing of the women
ceased.

The men thought that they were at length asleep, and
crept up to their camp. But lo ! it was empty ! Gone
were the BuUai Bullai !

The men heaped fuel on their fire to light up the darkness,
but yet saw no sign of the Bullai Bullai.

They heard a sound, a sound of mocking laughter. They
looked round, but saw nothing.

Again they heard a sound of laughter. Whence came
it ? Again it echoed through the air.

It was from the sky. They looked up. It was the new
star Womba, mocking them. Womba who once was
Weedah, who laughed aloud to see that the Bullai Bullai
had escaped their enemies, for even now they were stealing
along the sky towards him, which the men on earth saw.

"We have lost them," said Goolayyahlee. "I shall
camp alone," and he turned to go to his dardurr.

"They shall not escape me," said Beereeun. " I shall
make a roadway to the skies and follow them. Thence
shall I bring them back, or wreak my vengeance on
them."

He went to the canoe where were his spears ; having
grasped them, he took too the spears of Goolayyahlee, which
lay by the smoulderhig fire.

He chose a barbed one. With all his force he threw it
up to the sky. The barb caught there, the spear hung
down. Beereeun threw another which caught on to the
first, and yet another, and so on, each catching the one
before it, until he could touch the lowest from the earth.
This he clutched hold of, and climbed up, up, up, until he

12 More Australian Tales

reached the sky. Then he started in pursuit of the Bullai
Bullai, and he is still pursuing them.

Since then the tribe of Beereeun have always been able
to swarm up sheer heights. Since then too, his tribe, the
little lizards of the plains, make, just like he did, the mirages
to lure on thirsty travellers, only to send them mad before
they die of thirst. Since then Goolayyahlee the pelican
has been white, for ever did the ashes thrown by the Bullai
Bullai cling to him, except where he had shaken them off
from his hands, where are a few black feathers. The tribe
of Bullai Bullai are coloured like the green of the leaves
the sisters strung on themselves, in which to mourn
Weedah, with here and there a dash of whitish yellow and
red, caused by the ashes and the blood of their mourning.
And Womba the star, the mad star, still shines ; Canopus
we call it. And Weedah the mocking-bird still builds
grass nyunnoos, open at both ends, in and out of which he
runs, as if they were but his playground.

And the fire that Weedah and the Bullai Bullai made
spread from one end of the country to the other, over ridges
and across plains, burning the trees so that their trunks
have been black ever since. Deenyi, the iron-barks,
smouldered the longest of all, and their trunks were so
seared that the seams are deeply marked in their thick black
bark still, making them show out grimly distinct on the
ridges, to remind the Daens of Beereeun the mirage maker
for ever.

Bohrah the Kangaroo and Dinewan
the Emu

Bohrah the kangaroo lived in a grass nyunnoo with his
wife Dinewan the emu. He was a great wirreenun.

One evening when Bohrah was lying down trying to
sleep, Dinewan kept making holes in the roof of the
nyunnoo.

" What are you doing that for ? " asked Bohrah.

" Just for nothing," said Dinewan.

" Then get some grass and mend it up."

"There is no grass here."

"Then we will travel until we find some, for you won't
let me sleep."

Off they went. It grew darker and darker every minute.
Dinewan could not see where she was treading. She trod
on bindeahs, which stuck into her feet and hurt her.

Limping along and feeling sore from the prickles, she
said : " If you are such a great wirreenun as you say,
surely you could make the dark roll away ! Hunt it right
away to another country. Let me see where to walk. My
feet are very sore. If you could hunt the dark away, then

14 More Australian Tales

you would be a great wirreenun. Oh my poor sore feet !"
So crying she rubbed them against each other, which only
made the bindeahs stick further in, raising rough lumps on
her feet. Which lumps have been on the feet of her kind
ever since, and their legs have been bare and hard up to
the knee joint.

Now Bohrah the kangaroo was really a great wirreenun.

While it was still quite dark he said : "We will sleep
here, and I will hunt the dark away while we rest."

They laid down.

As soon as Bohrah was asleep, he sent his Mullee Mullee,
or dream spirit, out from his body to gather up the darkness
and roll it away to the westward. Having done so back
came the Mullee Mullee to the body of Bohrah, who now
woke up and saw what his spirit had done. He turned to
Dinewan, whom he saw had slept with one eye and one ear
open that she might see what he would do, and said :

" My Mullee Mullee has rolled the night from us. The
darkness is no more. It is rolled away for ever from me.
I and my people, from this out, shall be able to see to
travel and feed at night as if it were day; for us there is no
more darkness. You must feed in the daytime ; I can as I
please at night. You kept one eye and one ear open, you
shall always sleep so. First one side of your head shall go
to sleep and then the other, but never from henceforth both
at once." And since that time so it has been even as
Bohrah the kangaroo wirreenun said it should be.

Gheeger Gheeger the Cold
West Wind

DuRROON the night heron lived near a creek in which
was an immense hollow log; this he used both as a fish and
a man trap. He was by choice a bunna, or cannibal. The
immense log was hollow and was under the water. In the
middle of it Durroon had cut an opening.

When a Daen came to his camp Durroon used to ask
him to go fishing with him, saying he wanted a muUayerh,
or mate, as he was like a gundooee, one emu living alone.
He wanted some one to go to one end of the log and drive
the fish to the other, where he could catch them.

Seeing sense in this the Daen would agree, and off they
would go, Durroon armed with his spear, to spear the fish
when they came to his end of the log, so he said. But as soon
as he had sent his mullayerh off" to the far end, he would
go along the log to the opening in the middle.

Unsuspecting treachery the Daen would come through
the hollow log, driving the fish ahead of him. Directly
he was under the opening Durroon would drive his
spear swiftly into him, killing him on the spot. Then

1 6 More Australian Tales

Durroon would drag his victim out, and, dismembering
him, cook him.

In this way many men disappeared mysteriously until at
length a clever crow wirreenun determined to solve the
riddle of their disappearance.

Wahn the crow went to Durroon's camp. Durroon asked
him to go fishing with him, but first offered him some good
fat goodoo, or cod, he already had cooked.

Wahn agreed, and when they had finished their meal
Durroon proposed they should go fishing, but Wahn said :
" I ate too much goodoo. It was very fat. I ate a great
deal and must have a sleep first before I start."

"All right. Plenty of time," Said Durroon, feeling sure
of his man-flesh supper.

Wahn went to sleep that he might send his Mullee Mullee,
or dream spirit, to find out what was the trap Durroon had
in the creek. The Mullee Mullee soon found out all about
the opening in the top of the log, having done which back
he came. Then Wahn, having learnt all, woke up, and
said he was ready, so off they started. Durroon showed
Wahn where to enter the hollow log, at the far end.

Now Wahn was a great wirreenun whom Durroon had
no power to hurt, so he fearlessly went in. Durroon waited
until he appeared under the opening, then down went the
spear, evoking yells of " Wah ! Wah ! Wah ! " from Wahn,
who nevertheless went on and came out at the other end
with the spear.

"What made you do that ?" he said, pulling out the spear
from where it had stuck in him.

" I did not mean to spear you," said Durroon. " I thought
it was a big goodoo."

Gheeger Gheeger 17

" Well) come on, I have had enough fishing," said Wahn.
" You might make a mistake again."

On came Durroon, thinking Wahn really believed it was
an accident, but no sooner had he caught up Wahn than
he found himself speared in his turn, and fatally, as Wahn
struck to slay.

About this time, Gheeger Gheeger the cold west wind
had been blowing such hurricanes that the trees had been
blown in all directions, and the crows' humpies scattered
everywhere. "Now," thought Wahn, " I will catch Gheeger
Gheeger and shut her up in this immense hollow log, but
first I must dry the water off it."

This he set to work to do, and soon, one day when
Gheeger Gheeger was tired out, after having blown down
miles of trees, and cut the tribes with her cold blasts,
Wahn sneaked upon her and drove her into the hollow log,
which he blocked up at both ends and also at the hole in
the middle.

Gheeger Gheeger roared and howled, but to no purpose.

" You only go about destroying things ; you shall stay
where you are," said Wahn.

Gheeger Gheeger promised to be more gentle in future if
only he would let her out sometimes. For a long time
Wahn would not trust her and kept her closely imprisoned,
but after a while he let her come out occasionally, after she
promised to blow no more gales. Sometimes she breaks
her word and blows destructively as of old, but Wahn
quickly captures her again, and hurries her back to her log
prison.

There are holes now in this log and the breath of
Gheeger Gheeger comes through, so unless Wahn finds a

B

i8

More Australian Tales

new prison for her, one day she will burst forth, and then
there will be such a gale as never blew across the western
plains before. Gheeger Gheeger will blast with her breath
everything that stands in her way as she rushes to meet
her loved Yarrageh, the spring wind which blows from the
east Kumbooran, and which had of old been wont to meet
Gheeger Gheeger as she blew from Dinjerrah the west,
tempering, where they met, her cold with his own balmy
warmth.

Twice a year the winds all met, holding great corroborees
and wild revellings. Dourandowran came with his scorching
breath from Gurburreh, the north, to meet his loved
Gunyahmoo, the south-east wind which came from Bullime-
deehmundi, to fan him with her softer, cooler breezes
until his heat lessened, and he scorched those in his path
no longer. Then from Nurroobooan, the south, blew
Nooroonooroobin to meet Mundehwuddah, the north-west
wind.

After the big corroboree the winds parted, each to return
to his own country, hoping to meet again in another few
months to again corroboree.

Hence the unrest of Gheeger Gheeger in the hollow log,
and her much wailing that she could not break forth from
her prison and rush to mingle her icy breath with the balmy
one of Yarrageh.

Bilber and Mayrah

BiLBER, the soft-furred sandhill rat, was once a man, and
lived in a camp with Mayrah the wind for a mate. Mayrah
was a strange mullayerh for a man, he was invisible. He
could hold conversations with Bilber, but much as he
desired it, Bilber could never see him. One day he said to
Mayrah : " Why do you not become like me that I might
see you ? "

" I can see you," said Mayrah.

"Yes, I know that you can, but I cannot see you, only
hear you. I know you are there because you eat the food
before you. You catch opossums, and get honey, but
though I go with you, following your voice, yet I can
never see you, and I long to see some one again."

" But I can see you, so I am all right."

" But I cannot see you, and I long to see some one
again. I must travel away somewhere and join others of
my tribe. If I could only see you I would not wish for a
better mullayerh."

" Well, I am off hunting now. Are you coming ? "

" No, I will stay in the camp to-day."

Mayrah the wind went off, and when evening was at

20 More Australian Tales

hand he was not yet back. Suddenly Bilber heard a
roaring in the distance such as he had never heard before.
Then he saw, where the sound seemed to be, a column of
dust and leaves spouting up. " What sort of a storm is
this?" he asked himself. "I never saw anything like it
before. I will go up to that sand-ridge behind our camp
and make a hole in the soft ground, into which I will get,
so that this storm cannot take me away in its fury."

Off went Bilber hard as he could to the soft sandhill, the
storm roaring behind him. There he made a hole and
buried himself in it until the wind storm had passed.

Up came the wind, tearing on to the ridge, whirling
round the camp, sending the bark and boughs flying about.
On, on he went round Bilber's hole, but that he could not
shift, so howling with impotent rage as he went, he passed
on until his voice was heard only in the distance, and at
length not at all.

After a time Bilber came out. He had been so safe
and warm in his hole in the sand that he lived there ever
afterwards, and there he took his wife, when he found one,
to live. And to this day the Bilber tribe live in burrows
in the sand. They still hear the voice of the old Bilber's
mate, but never see his face, nor do they hear him speak
any longer their language as of old, for so angry was he at
Bilber's desire to see his face or leave him, that he only
howls and roars as he rushes past their camps. And never
since have any of the tribes seen where he camps, nor does
any one know except the six winds that blow, and they tell
the secret to none.

Bralgah the Dancing Bird

Bralgah Numbardee was very fond of going out hunting
with her young daughter Bralgah. Her tribe used to tell
her she was foolish to do so. That some day the
Wurrawilberoo would catch them.

It was not for old Bralgah Numbardee that the Daens
cared, but all the camp were proud of young Bralgah.
She was the merriest girl and the best dancer of all her
tribe, the women of whom were for the most part content
to click the boomerangs, beat their roUed-up opossum-skin
rugs, and sing, in voices from shrill to sweet, the corroboree
songs, while the men danced ; but not so Bralgah. She
must dance too, and not only the dance? she saw the rest
dance, but new ones which she taught herself, for every
song she heard she set to steps. Sometinjes, with
laughing eyes, she would whirl round like a boolee, or
whirlwind. Then suddenly she would change to a stately
measure. Then for variety's sake perform a series of swift
gyrations, as if, indeed, a whirlwind devil had her in his

grip-

The fame of her dancing spread abroad, and proud
indeed was the tribe to whom she belonged, hence their

2 2 More Australian Tales

anxiety for her safety, and their dread that the Wurra-
wilberoo would catch her.

The Wurrawilberoo were two cannibals who lived in the
scrub alone.

But in spite of all warnings Bralgah Numbardee con-
tinued to hunt as usual with only her daughter for com-
panion.

One day they went out to camp for two or three days.
Nothing hurt them the first night, but the next day the
Wurrawilberoo surprised and captured them. They gave
Bralgah Numbardee a severe blow. She fell down and
feigned death, lest they should strike her again and kill her.
The Wurrawilberoo picked her up to carry her off to their
camp. They did not wish to hurt young Bralgah ; they
meant to keep her to dance for them. They told her so,
and gave her their muggil, or stone knife to carry, telling
her to fear nothing, and come with them.

She went with them, but when they were not looking
she threw the knife away.

As soon as they reached the camp the Wurrawilberoo
asked her for it. They wanted to cut up Bralgah Numbardee
before cooking her. Bralgah said she put the muggil down
where they had rested, some way back, and had for-
gotten it.

They said : " We will go back and get it. You stay
here."

They started. When they were some way off the
mother said : " Are they out of sight yet ? "

" Not yet. Wait a little while."

Bralgah watched them go right away, then told her
mother, who immediately jumped up. Off then went both

Bralgah the Dancing Bird 23

mother and daughter as fast as they could to their own
tribe, whom they told what had happened.

When the Wurrawilberoo came back they were enraged
to find not only the daughter but the mother gone, even she
whom they had left, as they thought, dead. No feast, no
dance for them that night unless they recovered their victims,
from whose tracks they found that Bralgah had actually
been able to run beside her daughter.

" She only feigned death,' they said, " to deceive us.
We will hasten and overtake them before they reach the
tribe. Yea, even if they are with the tribe we will snatch
them away."

But the Daens were looking out for them, fully armed,
seeing which the Wurrawilberoo turned and fled, the Daens
after them in quick pursuit, but they failed to overtake
them ; and, fearing to follow them too far lest a trap lay
ready for them, they returned to the camp. But so wroth
were they at the attempt to capture their prized Bralgah
that a council was held, and the destruction of the Wurra-
wilberoo determined upon. Two of the cleverest wirreenuns
said they would send their Mullee MuUees in whirlwinds
after the enemy to catch them.

This they did. Whirling along went the boolees with
the Mullee Mullees in them. Quickly they went along the
track of the Wurrawilberoo, whom they soon headed, turn-
ing them back towards the camp whence they had fled.

" We will go," said one of the Wurrawilberoo to the
other, " back to the camp, ahead of these whirlwinds. We
will seize the girl and her mother, and fly in another
direction. The whirlwinds will miss us in the camp and
seize others. We will not be baulked. Young Bralgah

24 More Australian Tales

shall be ours to dance before us, and her mother shall
make our supper to-night."

On, on they fled before the whirlwinds, which gained
both size and pace as they followed them.

The Daens were so astonished at seeing the Wurrawil-
beroo returning straight towards them, the whirlwinds after
them, that they never thought of arming themselves. Into
the midst of them rushed the Wurrawilberoo. One seized
Bralgah the mother, the other young Bralgah, and before
the astonished Daens realised their coming they had gone
some distance along the edge of the plain.

" Bring your weapons," roared the Mullee Mullees in the
whirlwinds to the Daens as they swirled through the camp
after the enemy.

The Wurrawilberoo carrying young Bralgah was ahead.
The other, finding the whirlwinds were gaining on them,
dropped his burden, Bralgah Numbardee, and ran on.
Just in front of them were two huge balah trees. Feeling
that the whirlwinds, which they now knew must have
spirits in them, were already lifting them from their feet,
the Wurrawilberoo clung to the balah trees, the one who
had captured young Bralgah still holding her with one arm
while he grasped the tree with the other.

"Let the girl go," shouted the other to him. "Save
yourself."

" They shall never have her," he answered savagely.
" If I have to lose her they shall not get her."

Then as the whirlwinds howled round them, tearing up
everything in a wild fury, the balah trees now in their
grasp creaking and groaning, Wurrawilberoo muttered a
sort of incantation and released young Bralgah. As she

Bralgah the Dancing Bird 25

slipped from his grasp came a shout of joy from the Daens,
who were just in the wake of the whirlwinds ; they had
their spears poised, but had been frightened to throw for
fear of injuring Bralgah.

Now that she was free they called aloud : " Gubbah youl
gingnee ! Gubbah youl gingnee ! "

But their joy was short-lived. The whirlwinds wound
round the balah trees to which the Wurrawilberoo clung,
and dragged them from the roots before the men could
leave go. Up, up the whirlwinds carried the trees, the
men still clinging to them, until they reached the sky ;
there they planted them not far from the Milky Way.
And there they are still, two dark spots, called Wurra-
wilberoo, for the two cannibals have lived in them ever
since, being dreaded by all who have to pass along the
Warrambool, or Milky Way. Where are camped many old
Daens, cooking the grubs they have gathered for food,
and the smoke of their fires shows the course of the
Warrambool. But only can any one reach these fires if the
Wurrawilberoo are away, as sometimes happens when they
go down to the earth, and, through the medium of boolees,
or whirlwinds, pursue their old enemies the Daens.

When the Daens saw their enemies were gone, they
turned to get Bralgah ; her mother was already with
them.

But where was young Bralgah ? She had not been
seen to move away, yet she was gone. All round the
plain they looked. They saw only a tall bird walking
across it. They went to the place whence the trees had
been wrenched. They scanned the ground for tracks, but
saw none of Bralgah going away. Only those of the big

26 More Australian Tales

crane-like bird now on the plain. Wurrawilberoo must
have seized her again and taken her after all, they said.

As soon as the MuUee MuUees, which had animated the
whirlwinds, returned from placing the balah trees and the
Wurrawilberoo in the sky, the Daens asked them if they
had left her there.

No Bra,lgah they said had gone to the sky. Surely the
Daens had seen Wurrawilberoo let her go.

Then where was she ?

That no one could say, and none thought of asking the
big bird on the plain. All mourned for Bralgah as for one
dead. Her spirit, they said, would haunt the camp because
they could not find her body to bury it, though they knew
she must be dead, otherwise would she not return to them ?

They moved their camp away to the other side of the
plain.

After a while they noticed that a number of birds, like
the one they had seen on the plain at the time of Bralgah's
disappearance, came feeding round not far from, their camp,
and after feeding for a while these birds would begin to
corroboree ; such a strange corroboree, of which one bird
taller than the others was seemingly a leader.

This corroboree was so human and like no movements of
any other birds, like indeed nothing of the sort that the
Daens had ever seen, unless it were the dances of the lost
Bralgah.

Out on to a clear space the leader would lead her troupe,
There would be much craning of necks, and bowing,
pirouetting, stately measured changing of places ; then
gyrating with wings extended, just as Bralgah had been
wont to fling her arms, before she madly whirled around

Bralgah the Dancing Bird 27

and around as these birds did now, seeing which likeness
the Daens called : " Bralgah ! Bralgah ! "

The bird seemed to understand them, for it looked
towards them, then led its troupe into wilder, and more
intricate, figures of the corroboree.

As time went on the leader of the birds was seen no
more, but so well had her troupe learned the corroborees
that they went through the same grotesque performances as
in her time.

The old Daens died who remembered the dancing girl
Bralgah, but all these dancing birds were known for ever
by her name.

When Bralgah Numbardee died she was taken to the
sky, there to live for ever with her daughter Bralgah, both
known to us as the Clouds of Magellan, to the Daens as
the Bralgah.

There Bralgah Numbardee learned that the Wurrawil-
beroo by his incantation had changed her daughter into the
dancing bird, which shape she had to keep as long as she
lived on earth.

Afterwards, if ever the Daens saw a boolee speeding
along near their camp the women would cry, " Wurrawil-
beroo," clutch their children and bury their heads in their
rugs ; the men would seize their weapons and hurl them at
the ever-feared and hated capturers of Bralgah.

How the Sun was Made

For a long time there was no sun, only a moon and stars.
That was before there were men on the earth, only birds
and beasts, all of which were many sizes larger than they
are now.

One day, Dinewan, the emu, and Bralgah, the native
companion, were on a large plain near the Murrumbidgee.
There they were quarrelling and fighting. Bralgah, in her
rage, rushed to the nest of Dinewan, seized from it one of
the huge eggs in it, which she threw with all her force up
to the sky. There it broke on a heap of firewood, which
burst into a flame as the yellow yolk spilt all over it, which
flame lit up the world below, to the astonishment of every-
thing on it. They had only been used to the semi-darkness,
and were dazzled by such brightness.

A good spirit who lived in the sky saw how bright and
beautiful the earth looked when lit up by this blaze. He
thought it would be a good thing to make a fire every day,
which from that time he has done. All night he and his
attendant spirits collect wood, and heap it up. When the
heap is nearly big enough they send out the morning star
to warn those on earth that the fire will soon be lit.

How the Sun was Made 29

They, however, found this warning was not sufficient, for
those who slept saw it not. Then they thought they must
have some noise made at dawn of day to herald the coming
of the sun and waken the sleepers. But they could not
decide upon to whom should be given this office for a long
time.

At last one evening they heard the laughter of Gougour-
gahgah, the laughing jackass, ringing through the air.
" That is the noise we want," they said. Then they told
Gougourgahgah that as the morning star faded and the day
dawned he was every morning to laugh his loudest, that
his laughter might awaken all sleepers before sunrise. If
he would not agree to do this then no more would they
light the sun-fire, but let the earth be ever in twilight
again.

But Gougourgahgah saved the light for the world, and
agreed to laugh his loudest at every dawn of day, which he
has done ever since, making the air ring with his loud
cackling " gou-gour-gah-gah, gou-gour-gah-gah, gou-gour-
gah-gah."

When the spirits first light the fire it does not throw
out much heat. But in the middle of the day when the
whole heap of firewood is in a blaze, the heat is fierce.
After that it begins to die gradually away until only the
red coals are left at sunset, and they quickly die out, except
a few the spirits cover up with clouds, and save to light
the heap of wood they get ready for the next day.

Children are not allowed to imitate the laughter of
Gougourgahgah, lest he should hear them and cease his
morning cry. If children do laugh as he does, an extra
tooth grows above their eye-tooth, so that they carry a

30 More Australian Tales

mark of their mockery in punishment for it, for well do the
good spirits know that if ever a time comes wherein the
Gougourgahgahs cease laughing to herald the sun, then the
time will have come when no more Daens are seen in the
land, and darkness will reign once more.

Sturt's Desert Pea, the Blood Flower

Great was the talking in the camp one morning of the
river tribe, for during the night Wimbakobolo had fled,
taking with him Purleemil, the promised bride of Tirlta.
The elders sat together and planned how to capture
them. While they were talking the young men came
and told them that the tracks of the fugitives were
leading towards the large Boulka, or lake, where was
camped a hunting expedition, part of a tribe from the
back country, of whom the father of Wimbakobolo had
been one.

Then the elders knew the fugitives must be going to take
refuge with this tribe. They called the fighting men
together, and they said : " Gather ye your weapons, we
shall go to this tribe and demand that they give us the
fugitives. Wimbakobolo shall we slay, Purleemil shall be
Tirlta's to slay or keep as it pleases him."

Soon they went forward, after having painted themselves
in full war paint and armed themselves with many weapons.
For two days they followed the track. On the third day
they saw the camp fires; then they sent their messengers
to the tribe, whose elders received them and listened to

32 More Australian Tales

their request that Wimbakobolo and Purleemil should be
given up.

" Do not send me back," cried Purleemil, " to old Tirlta..
Two wives has he slain with his waddy ; let me not be the
third." And she sobbed aloud.

" Cease your crying," said Wimbakobolo. " I give you
up to no man, rather would I slay you with my spear.
Let Tirlta," he said, turning to the elders, " be a man and
fight me. I am ready but he is a coward. Men of my
father's tribe, who have given us shelter, who when we
were hungry gave us food, remember that in the days that
are past my father was one of you, a great warrior who
slew your enemies as if they were ants, so powerful was
he. Even as he fought for j'ou, so will his son in the days
to come, if you give him your aid now. Long have I
loved Purleemil, she with the starry eyes, and her heart
has been mine ever. Can a maid at the bidding of the
greybeards turn Her heart to a wife-slayer, leaving the one
she loves, turning from one who is young, strong, and
straight, to a bowed cripple ? Remember my father before
you despise the help of his son before you, and his grand-
sons to come. We shall never go back to the tribe of
Tirlta, rather will I spear Purleemil, my heart's beloved, as
she stands before you, and mingle my blood with hers."

Wimbakobolo drew himself up and looked so powerful
and fierce a warrior as he stood, weapons in hand, before
the elders, that they said : " Fools should we be to give up
the son of our old leader to our enemies. He shall lead us
as did his father before him, and his Purleemil shall be the
mother of warriors to follow him, for strong are the clan of
Wimbakobolo, men like mountains as their name tells."

Sturt's Desert Pea

33

Then an elder turned to the messengers saying : " Let
Tirlta come alone out on to the plain, there Wimbakobolo
will meet him, and there they can fight. If Tirlta will not.

then let him go back, a coward, to his country, and stay
there. Wimbakobolo remains with us, we shall give him
up to none."

Back to their tribe went the messengers, but no Tirlta
came to accept the challenge, and back to the big river went
he with the others.

Wimbakobolo and Purleemil lived in peace, loved of all
the tribe they had come to, for he was a mighty hunter, and
she a singer of sweet songs.

After a while when the cold winds began to blow round

c

34 More Australian Tales

the Boulka, the tribe moved their camp to where, on the far
side were more trees for shelter and firewood, for the
winter was at hand.

Before the winter had gone a son was born to Wimba-
kobolo and Purleemil, and seeing what a big baby he was,
the tribe laughingly called him "The Little Chief," and
brought him offerings of toy boomerangs, throwing sticks
and such things until the eyes of his mother shone with
pride, and the father already began to make him weapons
to be used one day against the enemies of the tribe who
had sheltered them.

And Purleemil sang new songs, which she said the spirits
taught her, about her little son, whom she said was to live
for ever, the most beautiful thing on the plains of the back
country.

Purleemil would sing her songs, and her baby would
crow and laugh, and the father would say little, but bear so
proud a look on his face as he glanced, from his carving
of weapons with an opossum's tooth, from time to time at
his wife and child, that all would smile to see his happy
pride, and their hearts were glad that the elders had not
given up Purleemil to be the bride of Tirlta, the wife-
slayer.

The winter passed away, and with the coming of the
summer all made ready to return to their hunting ground
where the fugitives had first come to them.

But Purleemil sang no longer. The spirits she said told
her that misfortune was at hand.

" Let us stay in the winter camp," she said to her husband,
"where we have been so happy. I fear we shall lose
our Little Chief if we go. Let us stay, my husband."

Sturt's Desert Pea 35

" That cannot be, my wife, or the tribe would call me a
coward, and say I feared to meet Tirlta."

" Better be called a coward, which all know you are not,
my husband, than lose our Little Chief. Dark would our
hves be without him, he is the sun that brightens our days,
without him dark as a grave would they be for ever."

" That is true, my wife ; now he has been with us so
long life would be dreary without him, our Little Chief.
But why should we lose him ? Did not the spirits say- he
should live for ever on the plains, then why should you fear
for him, my loved one ? "

"I cannot tell. Truly the spirits said so, and yet they say
now, as their voices come to me on every breeze, that mis-
fortune is at hand."

"But not for the Little Chief, Purleemil. For the
tribe, maybe, who sheltered us, then how could we leave
them to face it alone ? Come with me bravely, mother
of the Little Chief, lest your son drink in fear at your
breast."

So Purleemil hugged her child to her, and spoke no more
of her fear. And as the days passed merrily in the new
camp which was the old, the fears were forgotten, and the
spirits ceased their warnings.

One night when the tribe were all asleep unwitting of
danger, their enemies who had been waiting their chance
closed in round them. Closer and closer they came, led by
the crafty Tirlta ; too great a coward to risk an open fight,
he stole like a dingo into the camp at night, meaning to slay
by treachery all who had baulked him of his prey Purleemil,
she should be slain with the rest, men, women and children,
all were to be sacrificed to his hate. He had laid his plans

36 More Australian Tales

well, waiting until all fear of vengeance was over and all
vigilance relaxed.

Closer and closer they crept, making no sound as they
came nearer and nearer.

The Little Chief stirred in his sleep ; Purleemil crooned
him to rest again with the spirit's song telling how he
should live on the plains for ever, the brightest, most beautiful
thing on them; soon was he soothed and the mother, nestling
closer to the ever loved Wimbakobolo, slept again unwitting
of danger.

A dog at their feet growled, and Wimbakobolo stirred ;
again the dog growled, Wimbakobolo rose to his feet, but
even as he stood up he was felled to the ground by a deadly
blow from Tirlta, and into the camp rushed the enemy,
slaying the sleepers as they lay for the most part, though
some had time to seize their weapons, but in vain, to defend
themselves.

Tirlta, who for days had known the camp of Purleemil,
and claimed as his own victim her husband, having killed
him, now with a fiendish yell transfixed the body of the
Little Chief with a jagged spear.

The tongue of Purleemil, the sweet singer, clove to her
mouth as she saw her husband dead beside her, and her
child on the spear of her enemy. Then she wrenched the
spear from Tirlta, and the end which had passed through
the body of her baby she turned and .plunged into her own
heart, pinning the Little Chief to her, and fell with him dead
on to the body of her husband, and the life blood of the
three mingled into one stream.

Thus was accomplished the vengeance of Tirlta, which
left not one of the tribe, who had given the fugitives shelter.

Sturt's Desert Pea 37

alive. Leaving the bodies to the hawks and crows, Tirita
and his tribe went back to the Callawatta.

The next season they determined to hunt on the
hunting grounds of their dead enemies. But when they,
reached them they camped some distance away from
the scene of the slaughter, lest the spirits of the dead
should molest them.

At night th'ey saw strange lights moving on that spot,
then they knew that the spirits were indeed abroad.

The next morning they went for water to the Boulka, or
lake. How it glistened in the sun ! But was it water ?
They paused and looked. No water was that before them.
On they went and then saw that the large lake had been
turned to salt. Then the tribe were frightened, and turned
back to their own hunting grounds, for no man likes to
dare the spirits. Tirita said he would follow them, but first
would he go to where bleached the bones of his enemies, it
would give him joy, he said, to see them. With hatred
still strong in his heart he went. But surely, he thought,
must his eyes be dazzled with the glare from the salt
lake before him, for he saw no bones in the place
where his enemies had been, only masses of brilliant red
flowers spreading all over the scene of the massacre, flowers
such as he had never seen before.

As he was gazing with a dazed expression at them, there
stretched down from the sky a spear with a barb that caught
him in the side and lifted him from his feet. As he hung
in mid air he heard a voice, though he saw nothing, say:
" Cowardly murderer of children and women, how dare you
set foot on the spot made sacred for ever by the blood that
you spilt, the blood of the Little Chief, his mother and

38 More Australian Tales

father, which flowed in one stream and blossomed as you
see it now, for no man can kill blood, for more than the life
of the flesh is in blood. Their blood shall live for ever,
making beautiful with its blazing brightness the bare plains
where are the salt lakes, the dried tears of the spirits whose
songs Purleemil sang so sweetly, the salt tears which they
shed when you and such as you poured out the life blood of
their loved tribe. Here shall you sit for ever before your
handiwork, the work of a coward."

So saying the spirit transfixed Tirlta to the ground,
leaving the spear still through him.

There in the course of ages man and spear turned to
stone as an everlasting monument of the spirit's power, and
there at Tirlta's feet spread the beautiful red flower, the
glory of the Western plains where the salt lakes are — -Sturt's
Desert Pea we call it, but to the old tribes it was known as
the Flower of Blood.

Piggiebillah the Porcupine^

PiGGiEBiLLAH was getting old and not able to do much
hunting for himself. Nor did he care so much for the flesh
of emu and kangaroo as he did for the flesh of men.

He used to entice young men . to his camp by various
devices, and then kill and eat them.

At last the Daens found out what he was doing. They
were very angry, and determined to punish him. " We
will kill or cripple him," they said, " so that he, giant
though he be, shall be powerless against our people." A
mob of them went and surrounded his camp.

He was lying asleep, face downwards, as he did not
wish his doowee or dream spirit to leave him, as it might
have done had he slept on his back, with his mouth
exposed.

In his sleep even he seemed to hear a rustling in the
leaves, but suspected no evil, saying drowsily to himself :
" It is but the Bullah Bullah, or butterflies, fluttering round."
Then he slept on while his enemies closed in round him.

Raising their spears, with one accord they threw them
at him, until his back was one mass of them sticking up all
over it. Then the Daens rushed in, and broke his arms

40 More Australian Tales

and legs, with their boondees and woggarahs, crippling him
indeed. As he made neither sound nor movement, they
thought they had killed him, and went back, satisfied with
their vengeance, to the camp, meaning to return for their
weapons later.

As soon as the Daens were gone, Piggiebillah crawled
away on all fours to the underground home of his friend,
Murgah Muggui the spider. Down he went in through
the trap-door, and there he stayed until his wounds were
healed.

He tried to draw out the spears, but was unable to do
so ; they stayed in his back for ever, and for ever he went
on all fours, as his tribe have done ever since. They, too,
as he did, get quickly underground if in danger from
enemies.

When the Guineeboo or redbreasts, of whose family
Piggiebillah's wife had been one, heard what had happened
to him, they lifted up their voices and sang the death wail
until its melancholy sounds echoed through the bush, as
they rose and fell in wave-like cadences. In their grief
they cut their heads with muggil or stone knives, and
comeboos or tomahawks, until the blood ran down staining
their breasts red, and the breasts of the Guineeboo have
been red ever since.

Gayardaree the Platypus

A YOUNG duck used to swim away by herself in the creek.
Her tribe told her that MuUoka, the water devil, would catch
her some day if she were so venturesome. But she did
not heed them.

One day after having swum down some distance, she
landed on a bank where she saw some young green grass.
She was feeding about when suddenly out rushed from a
hidden place Biggoon, an immense water rat, and seized her.

She struggled and struggled, but all in vain. "I live
alone," he said ; "I want a wife."

" Let me go," said the duck ; " I am not for you ; my
tribe have a mate for me."

" You stay quietly with me, and I will not hurt you. I
am lonely here. If you struggle more, or try to escape, I
will knock you on the head, or spear you with this little
spear I always carry."

" But my tribe will come and fight you, and perhaps kill
me."

" Not they. They will think MuUoka has got you. But
even if they do come, let them. I am ready." And again
he showed his spear.

42 More Australian Tales

The duck stayed. She was frightened to go while the
rat watched her. She pretended that she liked her new
life, and meant to stay always ; while all the time she was
thinking how she could escape. She knew her tribe came
to look for her, for she heard them, but Biggoon kept her
imprisoned in his hole in the side of the creek all day, only
letting her out for a swim at night, when he knew her tribe
would not come for fear of MuUoka.

She hid her feehngs so well that at last Biggoon thought
she really was content with him, and gradually he gave up
watching her, taking his long day sleep as of old. Then
came her chance.

One day, when Biggoon was sound asleep, she slunk out
of the burrow, slid into the creek, and swam away up it, as
quickly as she could, towards her old camp.

Suddenly she heard a sound behind her ; she thought it
must be Biggoon, or perhaps the dreaded Mulloka, so, stiff
as her wings were, she raised herself on them, and flew the
rest of the way, alighting at length very tired amongst her
tribe.

They all gabbled round her at once, hardly giving her
time to answer them. When they heard where she had
been, the old mother ducks warned all the younger ones
only to swim up stream in the future, for Biggoon would
surely have vowed vengeance against them all now, and
they must not risk meeting him.

How that little duck enjoyed her Hberty and being with
her tribe again ! How she splashed as she pleased in the
creek in the daytime and flew about at night if she wished !
She felt as if she never wanted to sleep again.

It was not long before the laying season came. The

Gayardaree the Platypus 43

ducks all chose their nesting places, some in hollow trees,
and some in mirrieh bushes. When the nests were all
nicely lined with down feathers, the ducks laid their eggs.
Then they sat patiently on them, until at last the little fluffy,
downy ducks came out. Then in a little time the ducks in
the trees took the ducklings on their backs and in their
bills, and flew into the water with them, one at a time.
Those in the mirrieh-bushes waddled out with their young
ones after them.

In due course the duck who had been imprisoned by
Biggoon hatched out her young, too. Her friends came
■swimming round the mirrieh-bush she was in, and said :
" Come along. Bring out your young ones, too. Teach
them to love the water as we do."

Out she came, only two children after her. And what
were they ? Such a quacking gabble her friends set up,
shrieking : " What are those ? "

" My children," she said proudly. She would not show
that she, too, was puzzled at her children being quite
different from those of her tribe. Instead of down feathers
they had a soft fur. Instead of two feet they had four. Their
bills were those of ducks, and their feet were webbed, and on
the hind ones were just showing the points of a spear, like
Biggoon always carried to be in readiness for his enemies.

" Take them away," cried the ducks, flapping their wings
and making a great splash. " Take them away. They are
more like Biggoon than us. Look at their hind feet ; the tip
of his spear is sticking from them already. Take them
away, or we shall kill them before they grow big and kill us.
They do not belong to our tribe. Take them away. They
have no right here."

44 More Australian Tales

And such a row they made that the poor little mother
duck went off with her two little despised children, of
whom she had been so proud, despite their peculiarities.
She did not know where to go. If she went down the
creek, Biggoon might catch her again, and make her
live in the burrow, or kill her children because they had
webbed feet, a duck's bill, and had been hatched out of eggs.
He would say they did not belong to his tribe. No one
would own them. There would never be any one but her-
self to care for them ; the sooner she took them right away
the better.

So thinking, away up stream she went until she reached
the mountains. There she could hide from all who
knew her, and bring up her children. On, on she went,
until the creek grew narrow and scrubby on its banks, so
changed from the broad streams which used to placidly flow
between large unbroken plains, that she scarcely knew it.
She lived there for a little while, then pined away and died,
for even her children as they grew saw how different they
were from her, and kept away by themselves, until she felt
too lonely and miserable to live, too unhappy to find food.
Thus pining she soon died away on the mountains, far from
her old noorumbah, or hereditary hunting-ground.

The children lived on and throve, laid eggs and hatched
out more children just like themselves, until at last, pair by
pair, they so increased that all the mountain creeks had before
long some of them. And there they still live, the Gayardaree,
or platypus, quite a tribe apart — for when did ever a rat
lay eggs ? Or a duck have four feet ?

How Mungghee, or Mussels, were
Brought to the Creeks

One day in the far past a Mungghee wurraywurraymul, or
sea-gull, Was flying over the Western plains carrying a
mussel. Wahn the crow saw her, and wondering what
she carried, pursued her. In her fear at being overtaken
she dropped the mussel.

Seeing it drop, Wahn stopped his pursuit and swooped
down to see what this strange thing was. Standing beside
it, with his head on one side, he peered at it. Then he
gave it a peck. He rather liked the taste of it ; he pecked
again and again, until the fish in one side of the shell was
finished. He never noticed that there was a fish in the
other side too, so he took up the empty shell, as he
thought, and threw it into the creek. There this Mungghee
throve and multiplied, all that followed her being as she
was, one fish enclosed between two shells, not as the one
Mungghee wurraywurraymul had brought, which had two
fish, one on each side shell.

Not knowing that he had thrown a Mungghee mother
into the creek, Wahn determined to pursue Mungghee wurray-

46 More Australian Tales

wurraymul and get more, or find out whence she had
brought the one he had thought so good, that he might get
some. Away he flew in the direction she had gone. He
overtook her some miles up the creek beside a big water-
hole. Before she saw him coming he had swooped down
upon her, crying, " Give me some more of that fish in two
shells you brought."

" I have no more. Let me go."

" Tell me, then, where you got it, that I may get more
for myself."

" They do not belong to your country. They live in
one far away which I passed in my flight from the big salt
water here. Let me go." And she struggled to free
herself, crying piteously the strange, sad cry of her tribe.

But Wahn, the crow, held her tightly. " If you promise
to go straight back to that country and bring some more
I will release you. That you must promise, and also that
when I have finished those you shall bring more, that I
may never be without them again. If you do not promise
I will kill you now."

" Let me go, and I will do as you ask. I promise my
tribe shall help me to bring Mungghee to your creeks."

" Go, then," said Wahn, " swiftly back, and bring to me
here on the banks of the creek the fish that hides itself
between two shells." And he let her go, turning her head
towards the south.

Away she flew. Days passed, and months, and yet
Mungghee wurraywurraymul did not return, and Wahn was
angry with himself for not having killed her rather than let
her so deceive him.

He went one day to the creek for a drink, and stooping.

Mungghee in the Creeks 47

he saw before him a shell such as he had thrown into the
water. Thinking it was the same he took no notice, but
going on along the creek he saw another and yet another.
He cracked one by holding it in his beak and knocking it
against the root of a tree on the bank. Then he ate the
fish, and looking round for more he found the mud along
the margin of the creek was thick with them. Then not
knowing that the mussel shell he had thrown away held a
fish, he thought Mungghee wurraywurraymul must have
returned unseen by him, disappearing secretly lest he should
hurt her.

Later he found that was not so, for one day he saw a
flock of her tribe flying over where he was. They alighted
a little higher up, where he saw some of them stick the
Mungghee they were carrying in the mud just under the
water. Having done so, on they flew a little farther to stick
others, and so on up the creek. Having finished their
work they turned and flew back towards the sea-coast.
Wahn noticed that the Mungghee came out of the water,
and opening their shells, stretched out. between them, and
uttered a low, piteous, muffled, raew-like sound. Making
their way along the mud, they cried as they went for the
Mungghee wurraywurraymul to take them back to their own
country. But their cries were unheeded, for far away were
the sea-gulls.

At last they reached the Mungghee which had been born
in the creek. These being stronger and more numerous
than the newcomers, soon altered their habits of life,
teaching them to live as they did, only one fish in the two
joined-together shells ; and so have all mussels been ever
since. For though from time to time, on the rare visits of

48 More Australian Tales

the sea-gulls to the Back Creeks, fresh Mungghee are
brought, yet these too soon do as the others.

The Daens cook mussels in the hot ashes of their fires,
and eat them with relish, saying, " If it had not been for
Wahn we should not have had this good food, for he it was
who caused it to be given to us by Mungghee wurray-
wurraymul, the mussel-bringer."

Wurrunnah's Trip to the Sea

When the two Meamei* were translated to the sky from
Wurrunnah's camp, failing to recover them, he journeyed on
alone. He was now a long way from the spot he had
started from, which was near Nerangledool. He had
passed Yaraanbah, Narine, and had reached Nindeegoolee,
where the little sand-ridges are, to where the Earmoonan
have gone from Noondoo.

He was camping by some water when he saw a strange
creature coming towards him, having the body and head of
a dog, feet of a woman, and a short tail. It bounded four
or five feet in the air as it came along, making a whirring,
whizzing noise with its lips.

" What is this coming to water ? " said Wurrunnah to
himself. When the creature was close, he said : " It must
be Earmoonan, one of the pups of the dog Byamee left at
Noondoo that I have heard of." t

He called out to it, " Where is your old master ? " for
he thought he would find out if the strange creature knew
where Byamee was. For answer the Earmoonan made the

* See "Australian Legendary Tales," p. 41, " Meamei the Seven Sisters."
t Ibid., p. 104, " The Borah of Byamee."

50 More Australian Tales

spluttering, whizzing noise witii his lips Wurrunnah had
already heard.

Wurrunnah said : " Has he gone right away from you?"
Again came only the spluttering, whizzing noise, a sort of
pursing of the lips together, and blowing out a sound like
" Phur-r, phur-r."

"Is it true that he has gone for ever ? "

" Phur-r, phur-r," came again the answer.

Wurrunnah stood up and motioned Earmoonan back,
saying: "You go away now. That will do. I want you
ihere no more. You tell me nothing of Byamee."

At the sound of the name "Byamee," Earmoonan jumped
away, saying as lie went : " Phur-r, phur-r."

He quickly disappeared, going back to the sand-ridges
under which Wurrunnah had heard he and the rest of
the strange litter lived, in huge caves, where- they
imprisoned any travellers they could round up into
them. Nothing frightened them but mention of the name
of Byamee.

Wurrunnah did not mean to risk another encounter, so
he hurried on to Dungerh. On, on he travelled for many
days, until at last he reached Doogoonberh, which is on the
sea. Seeing a wide expanse of water before him and
feeling thirsty, he took his little binguie down to dip some
out and drink.

" Kuh ! " he said as he swallowed a mouthful before he
realised the strange taste. " Kuh ! Budta ! Budta ! Salt !
Salt ! " said he, as he spat out what he could.

He thought it must be the white froth that was salt, so
he cleared this off with his hand, dipped the binguie in
again, and again tasted. " Kuh ! Kuh ! Budta ! Budta 1 I

Wurrunnah's Trip to the Sea 51

am thirsty. I must go back to the water-holes I passed and
get a drink there."

Before going, he looked as far as his eye could reach
across the sea. He said : " What sort of flood water is
this that has a tree in it nowhere, not even a mirrieh-bush,
and is salt, salt to taste ? It does not look like flood water
at all. It looks like Goonagulla, the sky, with white
clouds on it. Yet when the clouds move the sky is still ;
all this moves and is water, though surely man never tasted
such before."

Wonderingly, back he went to the water-holes and
quenched his thirst. Then he killed two opossums, and
skinned them to make water-bags, orguUeemeah.

That night as he camped out of sight of, and some
distance away from, the sea he heard its booming noise,
for the wind had risen. What the noise was he did not
know.

The next morning he went to see the strange water
again, thinking he might now make out a bank on the far
side. Seeing a high tree a few hundred yards from the
beach, he climbed up it and looked again seawards,
scanning the distant horizon for trees or land. He saw
only water, a dark troubled-looking water that day.

" There is a thunderstorm in it. This must be the
camp of Dooloomai the Thunder, and the roaring winds,"
he said as he listened to the angry booming, " That is
what I heard last night." Then, as he saw the tide rising
and the waves chasing each other on to the beach, where
they dashed with an angry roar, going back only to come
rushing in again higher next time, he said: "There must
be Wundah — devils — in it, and they are trying to get me.

52 More Australian Tales

I will go up that high mountain ; there shall I see better."
But in vain he climbed the mountain ; he saw only the
strange water, as far as he could see, water, only water.

Down the mountain he went again, back to the water-
holes, where were hanging the opossum skins to dry.
These he quickly made into water-bags. He waited until
he saw the strange water still as when he first saw it, then
he went to it and filled the bags with it. He then picked
up a few shells to take away with him. He meant to go
straight back to his tribe and tell them what he had seen,
taking with him the bags of water that they might taste it
and know his story was true.

On his return journey he met a very old Daen. Wur-
runnah thought he might know something of this strange
water, and its booming voices. The old wirreenun listened
to all Wurrunnah told him. He tasted the water, spat it
out again, sat silent for some time, then he said : " Surely
have then my father's fathers spoken truly when they told
their children, that there was beyond the mountains more
water than the eye of man could stretch across, water
covering a bigger plain than the eye of man has ever seen,
water which is full of dangers for man, whom it pursues to
its very banks, where it rages when it cannot catch him for
the many monsters which live in it, and are bigger, they
said, and deadlier than Kurreahs. Saw you any such ? "

" Nothing," said Wurrunnah, " did I see but water, budta
water everywhere. But the voices of these monsters was
the noise I heard, bidding the water draw me to them, and
howling in rage when I got free away. I shall go swiftly
to my tribe, and tell them what I have seen and heard."

Before going he gave the old wirreenun some of the

Wurrunnah's Trip to the Sea 53

salt water that his tribe might taste it. He also gave him
a shell, one of those he had picked up on the beach.

These shells were afterwards the cause of many fights,
one tribe trying to get them from the other. The oldest
wirreenun of the tribe always wore one of them at the great
corroborees. After many generations had passed away,
one wirreenun, in whose possession it was, put it for safety
in his Minggah, or spirit tree. And to this day there are
fights about it, for he died leaving it there. Some tribes
try to steal it, but others fight to protect it.

Every now and then on his road home Wurrunnah had
to stay and make fresh bags to carry the salt water in, as
the old ones started to leak, but at length he reached
Nerangledool again, with enough for the elders of his tribe
to taste.

None of them knew where he had been, nor could they
imagine what this water was which stretched farther than
all their hunting grounds. Any stranger that came to the
camp was brought to Wurrunnah that he might hear from
him what had turned him back on his journey. But
Wurrunnah did not live long to tell his story ; what he had
seen became a tradition in his tribe.

He had broken the law of Byamee by leaving his own
hunting ground, so was not allowed to live long after his
return.

But yet so famous was he from his far journeyings that
when he died, followed by a terrific crash, a huge meteor
shot across the sky, thereby telling the tribes for miles
round that a great spirit had passed from the earth.
From generation to generation was told the story of
Wurrunnah's journey and the strange water he had seen,

54- More Australian Tales

and at the big corroborees were seen the shells he had

brought.

At length the Wundah or white devils came to live in

the country, and the truth of the old tradition was proved

by some black boys who went down from Gundablouie with

cattle to Mulubinba.

There they saw the widely stretching water, with the

white clouds on it. There they heard its booming roar.

They were terrified, but one boy, more venturesome than

the others, said :

" Let US-taste it. If it is salt, then in truth this is lilce
the water the old men tell us Wurrunnah saw." They
tasted it. It was salt.

' " It is true," they said, " that which they told us. We
will tell them that we too have seen it, and have tasted it.
And we will take back some of these wa-ah to wear at the
corroborees." So back to the tribes they took the shells
to prove their story.

One of those boys, the first who tasted the salt water, is
an old man now. He it is who told me the story of
Wurrunnah's trip to the sea.

Walloobahl the Bark Lizard

Every day, while the little camp children were playing and
their parents were away hunting, a strange little boy used
to come to the camp. He was only a little boy about six
or seven years old.

Every afternoon, after having played for some time with
the other children, he would run away from them, go round
the different dardurrs, and steal food out of them all, taking,
anything eatable he could find.

When the children saw him thus helping himself, they
called out : " Don't touch our mother's things ! "

He did not heed them, but took what he wanted. The
children used to try and get what he took back. But when-
they came near to him he shot up suddenly taller and taller,
far out of their reach. Having thus startled them into
leaving him alone, he would escape to his own camp, the
whereabouts of which no one knew. At last the parents
began to notice how much of their food was taken during
their absence, and they said angrily to their children, " You
eat all our food."

"No," they said, "we do not. It is a little boy who
comes while you are away. He comes along that track in
the scrub."

56 More Australian Tales

The parents said : " To-morrow we will wait for him,
and see if you are telhng the truth, for it would be a strange
little boy who could steal all the food we miss every day."
Accordingly the next day the parents hid themselves in
their humpies, instead of going out as usual.

The children played about, watching for the little boy ;
when they saw him coming one of them ran and told the
parents.

Walloobahl, after playing for a little while as usual, went
to the first humpie and sat down, looking round for what
he might take. After he had rested a few minutes he
helped himself to some food, and was then moving on to
the next humpie. But before he had time to go many
steps, out the men and women rushed, yelling at him and
brandishing boomerangs and boondees, which they soon
threw at him. But to their surprise, even as their children
had said, up he shot, growing taller and taller, while their
weapons fell harmlessly around him. Seizing more they
threw another shower at him, aiming higher up, but he
grew taller and taller, still unhurt. Then dropping their
remaining boomerangs and boondees, they caught hold of
their spears and threw these with deadly force at him. As
the spears pierced him, Walloobahl fell dead.

As they saw him lying there, the Daens said : "He was
our enemy, stealing our food. No need to bury him. We
will only cover him with bark and change our camp."

This they did, and long afterwards they saw creep from
under the bark a little lizard. And they called it Walloo-
bahl, because they said it must be the spirit of the boy they
had killed. And ever since then the little bark hzard has
been called Walloobahl.

Goolayyahlee the Pelican

At one time the Daens had no fishing nets, nor then had
they the stone fisheries which Byamee afterwards made for
them, the best model of which is still to be seen at
Brewarrina.

In order to catch fish in those days they used to make
a wall of poligonura and grass mixed together, across the
creek ; then go above it and drive the fish down to it,
catching them with their hands against the break or wall.
Or they would put these breaks across a mubboon or small
tributary of the main creek, as a flood was going down, and,
as the water ran out of the mubboon, fish would be caught
in numbers in the break.

Goolayyahlee the pelican, a great wirreenun, was the
first seen with a net. But where he had obtained it from,
or where he kept it, no one knew for a long while. When
he wanted to fish he used to tell his children to go and get
sticks for the ends of the net, that they might go fishing.

" But where is the net ? "

" It will be here when you come back. You do what I
tell you. Get the sticks."

Frightened to ask more the children went to break the'

58 More Australian Tales

sticks which Goolayyahlee said must be of Eurah, a droop-
ing shrub growing on the banks of the creeks, or near
swamp oak-scrub. This shrub bore masses of large cream
bell-shaped flowers, spotted with brown, beautiful to look
at, but sickening to smell : where no dheal grew this shrub
was used in place of that sacred tree.

When the children brought back the eurah sticks, there
on the ground in front of their father was the big fishing
net, ten or twelve feet long,- and four or five feet wide.
Beside it was a small smoke fire of budta twigs, on to
which Goolayyahlee now threw some of the eurah leaves,
and when the smoke was thick he held the net in it. Then,
taking the net with them, down they all went into the
water, where two rnen with the net — through the ends of
which were the eurah sticks — -went down stream to a
shallow place, where they stationed themselves one at each
end of the net stretched across the creek between them.
The others went up stream and splashed about to frighten
the fish down to the net, in which some were soon caught.

When they had enough they would come out, make fires
and cook the fish. Every fishing-time the tribe puzzled
over the question as to how and where Goolayyahlee had
obtained this valuable net, and as to where he kept it, for
after each fishing-time he took it away and no one saw it
again until they went fishing ; his wife and children said
he never took it to his humpie.

One day the children thought that when they were sent
for the eurah sticks, some of them would hide and watch
where their father did get this net from. They saw him,
when he thought they were safely out of sight, begin to
twist his neck about and wriggle as if in great pain. They

Gbolayyahlee the Pelican 59

thought he must be very ill and were just coming from
their hiding place, when all of a sudden he gave a violent
Wriggle, contorting himself until his neck seemed to stretch
to an immense length ; the children were too frightened at
his appearance to move ; they stayed where they were,
speechless, huddled together, their eyes fixed on their
father, who gave another convulsive movement and then, to
their amazement, out through his mouth he brought forth
the fishing net.

So that was where he kept it, inside himself. The chil-
dren watched him drawing it out, until it all lay in a heap
in front of him, then down he sat beside it, apparently none
the worse, to await their return.

The children who had been hiding ran to meet the others,
whom they told what they had seen. They were so excited
at their discovery that they talked much about it, and soon
the secret hiding-place of the net was a secret no longer,
but as yet no one knew how it was made. At last Goolay-
yahlee grew tired of having to produce his net so often, for
the fame of this new method of fishing had spread through-
out the country ; even strange tribes came to see the
wonderful net. He told the people to do as he had done,
and make nets for themselves. Then he told them how to
do it. They were to strip off mooroomin, or Noongah bark,
take off the hard outside part, then chew the softer part, and
work it into twine, with which they could make the nets
though he only, he said, swallowed the fibre, and it worked
itself up into a net inside him ; but that was because he was
a great wirreenun ; others could not do so.

After that all the tribes made fishing-nets, but only the
tribe of Goolayyahlee could work the fibre inside them into

6o More Australian Tales

nets, which the pelicans do to this day, the Daens say. And
the Daens tell you that if you watch the Goolayyahlee or
pelicans fishing, you will see that they do not dip their beaks
straight down, as do other fish-catching birds ; the pelicans
put their heads sideways, and then dip their long pouched
bills, as if they were going to draw a net. Into these
pouches go the fish they catch, and thence down into their
nets, which they still carry inside them, though they never
bring them out now as in the days of Goolayyahlee, the
great fishing wirreenun, who gave all his tribe the deep
pouches which hang on to their long yellow bills, to use
instead of the net which each carries inside him, though
these are very miniature editions of the original Gpolayyah^
lee's net, but yet big enough to let the tribe still bear his
name, which means one having a net.

Mungoongarlee the Iguana
and Ouyouboolooey the Black Snake

When the animals were first on the earth they were very
much bigger than they are now. In those days the bite of
a snake was not poisonous, but that of an iguana was.
Mungoongarlee, the largest kind of iguana, which even now
in its comparatively dwarfed condition measures five feet or
so from tongue to tail, was, by reason of his poisonous bite,
quite a terror in the land. His favourite food was the flesh
of black fellows, whom he used to kill in numbers. Such
havoc had he wrought amongst them that at last all the
other tribes held a meeting to discuss how best to check
this wholesale slaughter. Many things were suggested,
but nothing that seemed likely to be effective. The meeting
was breaking up ; the tribes could think of no plan to save
their relations, the Daens. Just as they were dispersing
came Ouyouboolooey to the watering-place. He asked
what the meeting was about ; Dinewan the emu told him, that
Mungoongarlee was so merciless towards the Daens or
black fellows, living almost entirely on their flesh, that they
feared the race would soon be exterminated if something
were not done to stop it.

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"And," said Bohrah the kangaroo, "though some of us
are as big and bigger, as strong and stronger than Mun-
goongarlee, if we went to fight him he would kill us with
the poison he carries in a hidden bag, and we too should
die, even as our relations the Daens do. Most of us have
relations amongst the Daens, and we do not wish to see
them all killed, yet we know not how to stop the slaughter."

" I, too, have relations amongst them, the hippi and
comeboo. My relations must be saved," said Ouyouboo-
looey.

" But how ? " said the others. " We are nearly all their
relations."

" Mungoongarlee himself is their and my relation," said
Moodai the opossum.

" But that does not stop him from slaying them, whether
they are our relations the Murrees and Gubbees, or the
others, he slays all alike."

" I tell you that I shall save the Daens from Mungoon-
garlee," said Ouyouboolooey.

" But how ? " said the others in chorus.

" That I tell to none. But Yhi the sun shall not go to
her rest to-morrow before I shall have got that poison bag
from Mungoongarlee."

"Yhi the sun shall not have hidden behind that clump
of Yaraan trees before you lie dead from the poison
Mungoongarlee carries, if you fight against him."

" Did I talk of fighting ? Is there no way to gain your
end but by fighting ? Let those who fight die. I shall
not fight him, and I shall live. No Mungoongarlee shall
kill me."

So saying, away glided Ouyouboolooey through the trees

Mungoongarlee the Iguana 63

surrounding the water-hole where the tribes had met.
When he was gone, the others talked of him and his boast-
ing for awhile, then they all dispersed, having agreed to
meet again at the same place, when Yhi the sun was sinking
to rest the next evening.

Ouyouboolooey went his way alone, pondering over his
plans. Cunning he knew must be his guide to victory;
not otherwise could he hope to gain it, for Mungoongarlee
was bigger than he was, stronger, quicker of hearing and
quicker to move, and above all the hidden bag of poison
was his. The only advantage that Ouyouboolooey thought
he had was that Mungoongarlee had been invincible so
long that he might have grown careless and unsuspicious.
Ouyouboolooey decided he would wait until Mungoon-
garlee was gorged with his favourite food. He would then
follow him until he saw him go to sleep after his feast. That
would be the next day.

Having thus decided, Ouyouboolooey went near Mun-
goongarlee's camp, and lay down to sleep there. The
next morning he watched Mungoongarlee sally out. He
followed him at a distance, saw him surprise three Daens
one after the other, and kill them all, then sit down and
eat his favourite parts, taking some of the flesh afterwards
back to his camp with him. Ouyouboolooey followed him,
saw him sit down and eat more, then roll over and go to
sleep.

" Now is my chance," thought Ouyouboolooey, as he
crept into the camp.

He was just going to raise his boondee to crack the
skull of Mungoongarlee, when he thought, " But first I
might as well find out where he keeps and how he uses

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the poison. If I had it I could soon make myself feared
of all the tribes as he is."

Thus thinking he sat down to wait until Mungoongarlee
awoke. He did not have to wait long. Mungoongarlee
slept but restlessly. Feeling something was near he awoke,
sat up and looked round. At a little distance away he
saw Ouyouboolooey. As he was making a rush at him,
Ouyouboolooey called out :

" Take care ! If you kill me you will hear nothing of
the plot the tribes have planned against you, of which I
have come to warn you."

" What plot ? What can the tribes do against me ?
Have I killed numbers of the biggest tribe to be frightened
now of the others ? "

" If you knew their plot you would have no need to fear
them ; knowing it not your life is in danger."
" Then tell it to me."

" So I meant to do. But you were going to kill me,
though I had not harmed you. Why, then, should I save
your life ? "

" If you do not tell me I shall surely kill you."
" Then you will be killed yourself, for no one else will
warn you."

" Tell me the plot, Ouyouboolooey, and your life is
spared, and the lives of your tribe for ever."

" How do I know that you will keep your word ? You
will promise much, but how do I know that you will fulfil
your promise ? "

" Ask of me what pleases you, and I will give it to you,
to show I mean what I say."

" Then while I tell you the plot that threatens you, give

Mungoongarlee the Iguana 65

me your hidden poison bag to hold. Then only shall I
feel safe. Then only shall I tell you what was planned at
the water-hole where the tribes meet to drink ; where all
said the Daens should be saved and your end assured.
And surely it will be so if you do not know their plans."

Mungoongarlee asked Ouyouboolooey to name some
other boon, and surely he would grant it ; but his hidden
poison bag would he give to none.

" That is the way. You ask me to name what I want.
I do so. You cannot grant it. So be it. Keep your
poison bag. I will keep my plot." And he moved as if
to go.

" Stay ! " cried Mungoongarlee, who was determined to
hear the plot at all risks.

" Then let me hold the poison bag."

Mungoongarlee tried to induce Ouyouboolooey to make
other terms, but in vain, so he gave in. Reaching into his
mouth he drew the hidden poison bag out ; then he tried to
frighten Ouyouboolooey from taking it by saying :

" The touch of it will poison one not used to handle it.
I will put it beside me while you tell the plot against me."

"You will not do what I ask ; I will go." And he
turned away.

" Not so ; not so ! " cried Mungoongarlee. " Here,
take it."

Assuming as indifferent an air as he could, Ouyou-
boolooey took the bag, and went back with it to his old
place on the edge of the camp.

" Now quickly tell me the plot," said Mungoongarlee.

"It was this," said Ouyouboolooey, putting the poison
bag into his own mouth. Then going on : " It was this.

E

66 More Australian Tales

One of the tribes was to get this bag from you, and so
take away your power to harm the Daens in the future. I
vowed to do so before Yhi the sun went to her rest
to-night. Not by strength could I do it. Nor by strength
did I try to do it. Cunning I brought with me, and
cunning has done it. Back I go now to tell the tribes."

And before Mungoongarlee had time to realise how he
had been tricked, Ouyouboolooey was gone.

After him went Mungoongarlee, but his meal had been
heavy ; he only caught Ouyouboolooey up in time to hear
him tell the tribes that as he had said so had he done.

" Give us then the poison bag that we may destroy it,"
they said.

" Not so," said Ouyouboolooey. " None of you could
get it. It is mine alone. I shall keep it."

" Then you shall never live in our camp."

" I shall come as I please to your camps."

" Then we shall slay you. You are not big as is
Mungoongarlee."

"But I have the poison bag. Whosoever interferes with
me surely shall he die."

And away went Ouyouboolooey with the poison bag,
leaving Mungoongarlee to tell the tribes how he had been
tricked.

Ever since then the snakes have been poisonous, and
not the iguanas, and there has been a feud between the
snakes and the iguanas, who never meet without fighting.
But though the snakes have the poison bag, they are
powerless to injure the iguanas with it. For Mungoongar-
lee was a great wirreenun, and he knew of a plant which if
eaten after snakebite made the poison powerless "to kill or

Mungoongarlee the Iguana 67

injure. Directly an iguana is bitten by a snake he rushes
to this plant, and eating it, is saved from any evil con-
sequences of the bite. This antidote has ever since been
the secret of the iguana tribe, left in their possession by
the Mungoongarlee who lost his poison bag by the cunning
of Ouyouboolooey the black snake.

Wayambeh the Turtle and Woggoon
the Turkey

Wayambeh the turtle was the wife of Gougourgahgah, the
laughing jackass. They had a quarrel when the time came
for Wayambeh to lay her eggs. She was going as her
tribe did to the sand beside the creek, there to make a hole
and deposit them ; but Gougourgahgah said that was a
mad thing to do, a flood might come and wash them away.
She should lay the eggs in a hollow tree.

Wayambeh said : " How shall I get into a hollow tree ?
And even if I did get there how should I get sand up to
cover the eggs ? And how would the sun shine on the
sand to heat it and hatch them out ? "

" How was I born, and my mother before me ? " asked
Gougourgahgah, answering her question with another, going
on, " My wife can do surely as our mothers did ? "

" I am a Wayambeh, and it is right only for me to do
as the Wayambehs do. Does a child not take its name
from its mother ? My children will be Wayambeh even as
I am. I shall go to my own tribe."

Straight went Wayambeh to the creek where her tribe

Wayambeh the Turtle 69

lived. Into the water she went after them. Gougourgah-
gah followed her to the edge. Then he turned back and
sent his servant Wonga the pigeon, and Dumerh the wife
of Wonga, after Wayambeh.

Wonga sent Dumerh on to tell Wayambeh to come back.

But Wayambeh said : " No, I will not go back. Let
him come himself if he wants me."

Wonga and Dumerh went back and told this to Gou-
gourgahgah, who went as his wife had asked for him.
But on the bank of the creek he saw the mother of
Wayambeh, so he turned back, for the law of the tribes
did not let him speak to his mother-in-law. He sent
Wonga to consult her.

"Tell him," said Wayambeh the mother, "my daughter
will not go back. He would have her break the laws of
her tribe. She shall not leave her people."

Wonga went back to tell Gougourgahgah. Just as he
was beginning to do so, out from the grass crept behind
him Ouyouboolooey the black snake, an old lover of
Wayambeh, who was so enraged at this messenger wanting
to bring his old love back to the husband she had left that
he meant to kill him. He was in the act of making a
spring on to Wonga to throttle him, when Gougourgahgah
saw him.

Gougourgahgah made one dart and was on the back of
Ouyouboolooey. Clutching hold of him, he flew high in
the air, up, up, as far as his flight let him go, then he
loosened his hold of Ouyouboolooey and let him drop
swiftly, thud to the earth, his back broken. Down after
him flew Gougourgahgah. There in his camp he saw his
enemy lying dead.

70 More Australian Tales

" Twice have you tried to injure me, and twice have you
failed," he said ; " once when you wanted to marry
Wayambeh, who was promised to me, and now when you
wanted to kill my faithful servant, sneaking as you did like
a coward behind him. But instead of him, you yourself lie
dead, powerless for ever to harm me. So shall I kill ever
your treacherous tribe, against whom my people shall have
a dullaymullaylunnah, or vengeful hatred, for ever. Ah !
But it is good to see you my enemy lying there."

And Gougourgahgah laughed long and loud peals of
laughter, until the whole creek-side echoed with his startling
" Gou — gour — gah — gah. Gou — gour — gah — gah."

Startling indeed was the sound to Wayambeh, for her
liusband had always looked too solemn to laugh, except
when he had to herald the sunrise. She hurried out of the
water, and went away along the opposite bank as fast as
she could. She thought, as peal after peal of his strange
loud laughter reached her, that her husband had gone mad,
and if he caught her would kill her. So near the laughter
sounded that she fancied he was pursuing her. She did
not dare to look round but sped swiftly on. But instead
of following her, Gougourgahgah was eating his enemy, and
vowing again that so long as his tribe lived so long should
they wage war against the tribe of Ouyouboolooey, killing
and eating them.

While this feast off her old lover was going on, Wayambeh
was putting an immense distance between herself and her
old camp. At length she was too tired to go farther.
Where she rested was a nice sandy place beside the creek.
Here she decided to camp. She made a hole and laid her
eggs in it in due course. When the last was laid, and she

Wayambeh the Turtk 71

was carefully covering them up ready for the hatching, she
heard a sound on the bank above her. Looking up she
saw there a dark-feathered bird, with a red head and neck,
peering down at her, who, on seeing her look up, said :
" Why do you cover your eggs up ? "

"That the sand and sun may hatch them."

" But won't you sit on them yourself?"

" No indeed ! Why should I do that ? They will be
warm where they are, and come out even as I came out, in
the right time. If I sat on them I might break them.
And who would get me food ? I should die and they too."

The red-headed bird, which was Woggoon the brush
turkey, went back to where her mate was feeding and told
him what she had seen. She said she would like to try
that plan, it seemed much easier than having to sit on the
eggs week after week.

Her mate told her not to be in a hurry to change her
ways ; each tribe had its own custom. Then the
Wayambeh might be only fooling her. They would wait
and see if the eggs came out all right. But even so he
would not have her make a nest near the creek where a
sudden rise might wash it away. They must stick to their
scrub.

At length time proved that what Wayambeh had said
was true. The little Wayambeh all came out, and were
strong and well. Then the Woggoons decided they would
try and hatch their eggs without sitting on them. They
could not dig a hole to lay them in, but they scratched up a
heap of mixed debris, earth, sand, leaves and sticks. Then
the mother Woggoon every second day laid an egg until in
the mound were fifteen, all apart from each other, with the

72 More Australian Tales

thin end downwards. Over these they put some more
decayed leaves and rubbish, and outside all a heaped-up
covering of more leaves and twigs. When all this was
done the parents waited anxiously for the result.

As time went on the mother bird grew restless. What
if she had killed all her young just to save herself ? She
fussed round the big mound which stood some feet high.
She put her head in to feel if it were warm ; drew it out
quickly, delighted to find the nest was absolutely hot.
Then, she began to fear it would be too hot. Full of
anxiety she scratched away the earth and leaves, thinking
the covering was too much. She stopped suddenly and
listened. Was that a baby-bird note ? She listened
again. It was. She called to her mate. He came, and
when she told him what she had heard, he scratched away
until to their joy out came the finest chicks they had ever
seen, quite independent and strong, with feet and wings
more advanced than any seen on their chicks before.

Proud of the success of her plan, and anxious to spread
the good news, the mother Woggoon ran away from her-
family to tell all her tribe about them.

The next season the other Woggoons added to the size of
the mound, and many of the mothers laid their eggs in one
nest, until at last the whole tribe adopted the same plan,
thus earning for themselves the name of Mound Builders.

where the Frost Comes From

The Meamei, or Pleiades, once lived on this earth.* They
were seven sisters remarkable for their beauty. They had
long hair to their waists, and their bodies sparkled with
icicles. Their father and mother lived among the rocks
away on some distant mountain, staying there always, never
wandering about as their daughters did. When the sisters
used to go hunting, they never joined any other tribes,
though many tried from time to time to make friends with
them. One large family of boys in particular thought
them so beautiful that they wished them to stay with them
and be their wives. These boys, the Berai-Berai, used to
follow the Meamei about, and watching where they camped,
used to leave there offerings for them.

The Berai-Berai had great skill in finding the nests of
bees. First they would catch a bee, and stick some white
down or a white feather with some gum on its back between
its hind legs. Then they would let it go, and follow it to
its nest. The honey they found they would put in wirrees
and leave at the camps of the Meamei, who ate the honey,
but listened not to the wooing.

* Sei " Australian Legendary Tales: " Meamei, the Seven Sisters.

74 More Australian Tales

But one day old Wurrunnah stole two of the girls,
capturing them by stratagem. He tried to warm the icicles
off them, but only succeeded in putting out his fire.

After a term of forced captivity the two stolen girls were
translated to the sky. There they found their five sisters
stationed. With them they have since remained ; not
shining quite so brightlj' as the other five, having been
dulled by the warmth of Wurrunnah's fires.

When the Berai-Berai found that the Meamei had left
this earth for ever, they were inconsolable. Maidens of
their own tribe were offered to them, but as they could not
have the Meamei they would have none. Refusing to be
comforted they would not eat, and so pined away and died.
The spirits were sorry for them, and pleased with their
constancy, so they gave them too a place in the sky, and
there they are still. Orion's Sword and Belt we call them,
but to the Daens they are still known as Berai-Berai, the
boys.

The Daens say the Berai-Berai still hunt the bees by
day, and at night dance corroborees which the Meamei sing
for them. For though the Meamei stay in their own camp
at some distance from the Berai-Berai, they are not too far
away for their songs to be heard. The Daens say, too, that
the Meamei will shine ever as an example to all women on
earth.

At one time of the year, in remembrance that they once
lived on earth, the Meamei break off" some ice from them-
selves and throw it down. When, on waking in the
morning, the Daens see ice everywhere they say : " The
Meamei have not forgotten us. They have thrown some
of their ice down. We will show we remember them^too."

Where the Frost Comes From 75

Then they take a piece of ice, and hold it to the septum
of the noses of such children who have not already had
theirs pierced. When the septums are numb with the cold
they are pierced, and a straw or bone placed through them.
" Now," say the Daens, " these children will be able to
sing as the Meamei sing."

A relation of the Meamei was looking down at the earth
when the two sisters were being translated to the sky.
When he saw how the old man from whom they had
escaped ran about blustering and ordering them down
again, he was so amused at Wurrunnah's discomfiture,
and glad at their escape, that he burst out laughing, and
has been laughing ever since, being still known as Daendee
Ghindamaylannah, the laughing star, to the Daens, to us as
Venus.

Whpn thunder is heard in the winter time the Daens say :
"There are the Meamei bathing again. That is the noise
they make as they jump, doubled up, into the water, when
playing Bubahlarmay, for whoever makes the loudest flop
wins the game, which is a favourite one with the earth
people too." When the noise of the Bubahlarmay of the
Meamei is heard the Daens say too, " Soon rain will fall,
the Meamei will splash the water down. It will reach us
in three days."

Bubburr the Giant Brown and
Yellow Snake

BuTHA the lissome and soft-eyed was promised to Murree,
the swift-in-pursuit-of-game, and the time was at hand when
he could claim her, for he was now coming back from a
Boorah. Back from the tests of courage, back as a brave
of his tribe, back with a right to marry. Back to dis-
appointment ; back to despair. For first to meet him was
Gubbee, the father of Butha. First to tell him the news of
Butha, his promised one. Told how she had been hunting
for honey. How she had come to the nest of a Bubburr,
whence she had taken some eggs, bringing them even into
the camp. How, just as those who knew of the danger
rebuked her for touching these, gliding into their midst had
come the mammoth snake Bubburr.

Past them all, straight to Butha went Bubburr, coiled his
form round hers, crushing the life from her. Then swiftly
went he as he had come, leaving Biltha, the lissome and
soft-eyed, lifeless before them.

"Am I in time for the burial ? " said Murree.

"Three times has Yhi slept since we buried her," said
Gubbee.

Giant Brown and Yellow Snake 77

" Then she is even now travelling towards Weebulloo,
the heaven of women. I shall be swift to follow her. The
dheal twigs are yet green on her path. I shall snatch her
yet from Weebulloo."

"Think you," said Gubbee scornfully, "that she who
was murdered will follow one who has not avenged her ? "

Then Murree paused from slaying himself as he stood,
and he said : " There is wisdom in your words, O Gubbee,
father of She-who-is-lost. I shall first slay Bubburr, the
snake demon." Thus saying, Murree turned to the camp of
his tribe.

The days passed, and Biltha was still unavenged. But
Murree never forgot her. Nor did he cast one glance on
the comeliest of maidens. His heart was with Biltha in
Weebulloo. His mind was bent on revenge.

He went hunting with two of his tribe. At length he
saw what he wished for ahead of him. A nest of the
Bubburrs was there. He did not run straight to attack it,
as his mullayerhs expected, but went back with them to
the camp.

" Come," he said to his tribe, " come and let us gather
the gum of Mubboo."

He told them then why he spoke so, and, seeing his
reason was good, they followed him. Having gathered the
gum in plenty, they carried it back to their camp.

Next day they went with Murree, and at his bidding
broke down the branches of trees some distance from the
nest of the Bubburrs. With these branches they made
platforms on the boughs of some trees which he showed
them. They went on to these platforms, and the noise
they made was great ; hearing which out came the snakes.

7 8 More Australian Tales

the mammoth Bubburrs. Murree and the Daens had been
careful that no shadow of theirs should fall on the ground.
They knew well that the bite of even their shadows by a
Bubburr would kill them.

As the Bubburrs came nearer, and nearer, the Daens
made ready pieces of gum, gum of the Mubboo, about the
size of a pigeon's egg, to throw at their mouths. Snap
went the jaws of the Bubburrs at them. Another pellet ot
gum was thrown. Snap ! and the jaws, the jaws of death,
were closed, held fast by the gum between them. The
murderous Bubburrs were mastered. Murree the avenger
had conquered.

Seeing the scheme had worked as they wished, the
Daens returned to their camp. There they waited patiently,
returning in due time to the scene of their gum throwing.
They were laden with wood, for they expected to find their
enemies dead, and the flesh of Bubburrs was good. Great
was the joy of Murree when he saw the gum had stuck
their jaws fast, and that the Bubburrs were all dead. His
hand was swift to raise his comeboo, and sever their heads
from their bodies. Swift, too, were the Daens in lighting
fires for cooking the Bubburrs.

Scarce have Bubburrs been in the land since Biitha the
lissome and soft-eyed was avenged by the cunning of
Murree the swift-to-hunt-game.

Though their name carries terror yet to its hearer.
Their size has grown with the time, and fear has stretched
their measurements, until even the strongest and wariest
feel a tremour when the name of the brown and yellow
Bubburr is mentioned.

The Youayah Mayamah, or
Stone Frogs

A FAMILY of girls once so offended an old wirreenun that
one day, when they were out hunting in the bush, he turned
them all into Youayah, or frogs.

When days passed and they did not return, their mother
and relations thought that they had been stolen by men of
a strange tribe. Rain had come before there was any
alarm about their absence, so all tracks were washed out,
except the track of the Oodoolay, or round rain-making
stone, which had been abroad, as it always was in muddy
weather. This stone had the spirits of past rain-makers in
it, and could move about, as its tracks proved. Also, when
it was making itself a new camp before rain, it could be
heard laughing with joy in anticipation of the mud to come.
No one was ever seen to touch the Oodoolay, yet its changes
of camp were frequent.

Though some days had passed since they were missed
the mother of the girls still hoped to find them, thinking
they might have seen the rain coming and built themselves
a shelter in the bush, remaining there until it was over.

8o More Australian Tales

She went in the direction they had gone, and called aloud
to them. There came an answering call. On she sped to
whence it had seemed to come, and called again. Again
came an answer from close beside her. She looked round,
but saw no one. Again she called. There came an
answer from a tussock of grass at her feet. Then she
knew she had only heard the cry of Noorahgogo, the
orange and blue beetle, which could always answer thus a
Noongahburrah in the bush when one of that tribe was
alone. She gave up hope of finding her daughters, and
being weak and hungry she looked round for food.

Soon she saw some tracks of Youayah, or earth frogs,
and finding where they were, she began to dig them out.
Fine large Youayah they were, the largest she had ever
seen.

" What a feed I shall have," she said aloud.

There came a startlingly melancholy cry from the frogs,

who seemed to be gazing fixedly at her. But taking no
notice she went on : "I think I shall eat them here. I am
very hungry, and if I take them to the camp the others will

want some."

She stooped to pick them up, but such a crying came as

surely never frogs made before, and so piteously they

looked at her that she began to feel there was something

strange about these frogs, and she dropped the one she held

in her hand.

" But I am stupid," she said, " to take notice of a frog's

cry. I would be mad to leave such a good feed here."

And again she stooped to pick them up.

Again came their croaking cries intensified. And the

cries seemed to frame themselves into the words : " You

The Youayah Mayamah 8i

must not eat us. You are our mother. We are the girls
you lost. The old wirreenun changed us into frogs because
we but laughed at the mah of his tribe, saying the back of
it, the back of the emu, was humped as was his. You
cannot eat us." And loud was the croaking, and so
frightened was the woman that she turned and sped quickly
through the bush back to the camp with the mournful cry
still ringing in her ears, and a vision of the piteous eyes
ever before her.

She 'went straight to the old wirreenun and said : " Did
you change my girls into youayah, which are crying now
even in the bush ? "

" I did so," said he, quite proud the woman had seen
proof of his power.

■ " Why did you so ? Why should you leave me to grow
old with no daughter to care for me ? "

" Did you not choose their father rather than me ? Why
should I think of you now ? Let their father change them
again. Surely he is more powerful than I am, since you
chose him before me ? I am but a humped-back one,
so your girls said, even as they said my mah was, the
dinewan. Well you must know that to scoff at the mah of
a man is to make war with his tribe, yet I war not ; I but
turn your daughters into such as have voices which none
heed ; no more can they scoff at the back of a dinewan.
Go, woman, eat them. Youayah is food that is good." So
he taunted the woman who once in her youth had scorned
him.

" How should I, a mother, eat her young ? What talk
is that you make? But alas! surely another will find them
and eat them. Only you can save them. Change them

F

82 More Australian Tales

again, I pray you, so that none can eat them. Never again
shall they scoff at a dinewan. Never again will I scorn
you ; I will come to your dardurr for ever."

"Why should I take you to my dardurr now you are
old, when you came not young ? " And he turned away,
going on with the carving he was making on a boomerang
with an opossum's tooth.

"Change, oh change them, I pray you, so that none can
eat them. I will give you the dooree, or grunting dayoorl,
of my father's father's fathers to be yours for ever. No
one but its rightful owner can use it, for does it not grunt
when a stranger touches it? This stone, which of old
belonged to the wirreenuns of my father's tribe, Iwill give
you, this stone which alone of all dayoorls has a voice."

"Bring me the dooree," said the wirreenun, "and I promise
to change your girls so that they shall never be eaten."

The woman brought the magical stone of her forefathers,
her greatest possession, which grunted as she laid it at the
wirreenun's feet.

*' Now go," said the wirreenun, " into the bush, there
you will find your daughters, and find I have kept my
promise. Even now they are so that surely no one could
eat them."

Back on her tracks went the woman to where she had
seen the Youayah. Hopefully she went expecting to see
her daughters again. But when she reached the plac€ there
were the frogs still.

" Oh, my daughters, my daughters ! Shall I never see
you more as you once were ? " And she wailed aloud as
if mourning the dead. But no answer came from the
Youayah. Nor did they look towards her.

The Youayah Mayamah 83

Wailing, she stooped to pick one up.

" The wirreenun tricked me," she said; " surely indeed
no one will ever eat them, for they are turned into stone."

And so it was. Some were of plain grey stone, and
some with a stripe of green on them, just as the frogs had
been marked. Her daughters would be stone frogs for
ever, as were the frogs that Birrahgnooloo and Cunnum-
beillee had dug, and left for cooking before they took that
fatal plunge into the Spring Cowrigul, whence the Kurreahs
took them down the Narrin, and whither Byamee followed
them after changing the food they had gathered into stones
to mark the spot for ever. And there at the spring were
the stone frogs still, as the mother knew, and now she saw
their fellow in these the wirreenun had changed, these
who had once been her girls but now were Youayah
Mayamah.

A Legend of the Flowers

After Byamee left the earth,* having gone to dwell in
BuUimah, the far-away land of rest, beyond the top of the
Gobi Gobi mountain, all the flowers that grew on the
wogghees or plains, on the moorillahs or ridges, and all
the flowers that grew on the trees withered and died.
None grew again in their place. The earth looked bare
and desolate with no flowers to brighten it. That there
had ever been any became but a tradition, which the old
people of the tribes told to the young ones.

As the flowers were gone so were the bees. In vain
the women took their wirrees out to fill with honey ; they
always returned without it. In all the length of the land
there were but three trees where the bees still lived and
worked, and these the people did not dare to touch, for
Byamee had put his mah or brand on them, claiming them
thus as his own for ever.

The children cried for honey, and the mothers murmured
because the wirreenuns would not let them touch the trees
of Byamee, which were sacred from all for ever.

When the All-seeing Spirit saw that though the tribe

* See the Borah of Byamee, " Australian Legendary Tales," p. 97.

A Legend of the Flowers 85

hungered for honey, yet did they not touch Byamee's trees
he told him of their obedience.

Byamee was pleased, and said he would send them
something which, when, as now, the land was perished
with a drought, should come on the Bibbil and Goolabah
trees, giving a food as sweet to the taste of the children as
honey.

Soon were seen white sugary specks on the leaves of
the Bibbil, which the Daens called Goonbean, and then
came the clear wahlerh, or manna, running down the trees
like honey, to pile into lumps which stiffened on the forks
of the branches, or sometimes fell to the ground, whence
the children gathered and ate it when they could not reach
the branches.

The hearts of the people were glad as they ate gratefully
the sweet food sent them. But still the wirreenuns greatly
longed to see the earth covered again with flowers, as before
the going of Byamee. So great grew the longing that they
determined to travel after him, and ask that the earth might
again be made beautiful. Telling the tribes nothing of
where they were going, they sped away to the north-east.
On and on they journeyed, until they came to the foot of
the great Gobi Gobi mountain, which towered high above
them until they lost sight of its top in the sky. Steep and
unscalable looked its sides of sheer rock as they walked
along its base.

But at length they espied a foothold cut in a rock,
another and yet another, and looking upward they saw a
pathway of steps cut as far as they could see. Up this
ladder of stone they determined to climb.

Gn they went, and when the first day's climb was ended

86 More Australian Tales

the top of the mountain still seemed high above them, and
even so at the end of the second and third day, for the
route was circuitous and long ; but on the fourth day they
reached the summit. There they saw a stone excavation
into which bubbled up a spring of fresh water, from which
they drank thirstily, and found it so invigorated them as to
make them lose all feeling of weariness, which had previously
almost prostrated them. They saw at a little distance from
the spring circles of piled up stones. They went into one
of these, and almost immediately they heard the sound of a
gayandy, the medium through which Wallahgooroonbooan's
voice was heard. Wallahgooroonbooan was the spirit
messenger of Byamee. He asked the wirreenuns what
they wanted there, where the sacred lore of Byamee was
told to such as came in search of knowledge. They told
him how dreary the earth had looked since Byamee had left
it, how the flowers had all died, and never bloomed again.
And though Byamee had sent the wahlerh, or manna, to
take the place of the long-missed honey, yet they longed to
see again the flowers making the earth gay as once it had
been.

Then Wallahgooroonbooan ordered some of the attendant
spirits of the sacred mountain to lift the wirreenuns into
Bullimah, where fadeless flowers never ceased to bloom.
Of these the wirreenuns might gather as many as they
could hold in their hands. Then the spirits would lift
them back into the sacred circle on the summit of Oobi
Oobi, whence they must return as quickly as possible to
their tribes.

As the voice ceased the wirreenuns were lifted up through
an opening in the sky, and set down in a land of beauty,

A Legend of the Flowers 87

flowers blooming everywhere, in such luxuriance as they had
never seen before, massed together in lines of brilliant
colouring, looking like hundreds of euloowirrees, rainbows,
laid on the grass. So overcome were the wirreenuns that
for some moments they could only cry, but the tears were
tears of joy.

Remembering what they had come for, they stooped and
gathered quickly their hands full of the various blossoms.

The spirits then lifted them down again into the stone,
circle on the top of Oobi Oobi.

' There sounded again the voice of the gayandy, and
Wallahgooroonbooan said : " Tell your tribes, when you
take them these flowers, that never again shall the earth be
bare of them. All through the seasons a few shall be sent
by the different winds, but Yarrageh Mayrah shall bring
them in plenty, blossoms to every tree and shrub, blossoms
to wave midst the grasses on wogghees and moorillahs,
thick as the hairs on an opossum's skin. But Yarrageh
Mayrah shall not always make them thus thick, but only at
times ; but the earth shall never again be quite bare of
blossoms. When they are few, and the sweet-breathed
wind is not blowing to bring first the showers and then the.
flowers, and the bees can only make scarce enough honey
for themselves, then the wahlerh or manna shall again drop
from the trees, to take the place of honey until Yarrageh
Mayrah once more blows the rain down the mountain and
opens the blossoms for the bees ; and then there will be
honey for all. Now make haste and take this promise, and
the fadeless flowers which are the sign of it, to, your
people."
> The voice ceased, then the wirreenuns went back to their

88 More Australian Tales

tribes ; back with the blossoms from Bulh'mah. Down the
stone ladder, which had been cut by the spirits for the
coming of Byamee, they went ; across the wogghees and
over the moorillahs back to the camp of their tribes. Their
people flocked round them, gazing with wonder-opened eyes
at the blossoms the wirreenuns carried. Fresh as when they
left BuHimah were these flowers, filling the air with
fragrance. When the tribes had gazed long at the blossoms
and heard of the promise made to them by Byamee through
his messenger, Wallahgooroonbooan, the wirreenuns
'scattered the flowers from Bullimah far and wide. Some
fell on the tree tops, some on the plains and ridges, and
where they fell their kind have grown ever since.

The name of the spot where the wirreenuns first showed'
the flowers and scattered them; is still called Ghirraween,
the place of flowers. There, after the bees of Byamee had
made Yarrageh blow the rain down the mountain of Gobi
Gobi to soften the frost-hardened ground, green grasses
shot up framing fragrant bright flowers of many hues. And
the trees and shrubs blossomed thickly again, and the earth
was covered with cool grass and flowers as when Byamee
walked on it.

It is the work of the bees of Byamee to make Yarrageh
the east wind blow the rain down the mountain, that the
trees may blossom and the earth bees make honey.

Gladly does Yarrageh do the bidding of the bees, lighting
the face of the earth with the smile of rain-water, for are
not the Gwaimuthen his relations ? The Gwaimuthen
whose dark blood is warm as is his.

And the messengers who come in the drought, bringing
manna, are the black ants, who bring the goonbean on to

A Legend of the Flowers 89

the leaves, and the httle grey birds called Dulloorah, who
bring the wahlerh, or liquid manna.

And when they come the Daens say: "A time of drought
is here, a great drought on all the land. Few are the flowers
anywhere, and the grass-seed has gone. But goonbean and
wahlerh will go, and the drought will go, and then the
flowers and the bees will come again, for so it has always
been since the wirreenuns brought the blossoms from
BulUmah."

The Frog Heralds of the Flood

When Byamee ceased to sojourn on this earth, and went
back the way he had come from Bulliniah, up the circuitous
ladder of stone steps, to the summit of Oobi Oobi, only the
wirreenuns were allowed to hold intercourse with him, and
that only through his messenger, Wallahgooroonbooan.

For Byamee was now fixed to the crystal rock on which
he sat in BuUimah, as was also Birrahgnooloo.* The tops
of their bodies were as they had been on earth, but the
lower parts were merged into the crystal rock.

Wallahgooroonbooan, Baillahburrah and Cunnumbeillee
alone were allowed to approach them, and pass on their
commands to others. Birrahgnooloo was the flood maker.
^yhen the creeks were drying up and the wirreenuns
wanted a flood to come, they would climb up to the top of
Oobi Oobi, and await in one of the stone circles the coming
of Wallahgooroonbooan. Hearing what they wanted, he
would go and tell Byamee.

Byamee would tell Birrahgnooloo, who, if she were willing
to give her aid, would send Cunnumbeillee to the wirreenuns
bidding her say to them : " Haste ye to tell the Bungun

* See the Origin of Narran Lake, " Australian Legendary Tales," p. ii.

The Frog Heralds of the Flood 91

Bungun tribe to be ready. The ball of blood will be sent
rolling soon."

Hearing which, the wirreenuns would go swiftly back
down the mountain and across the wogghee below, until they
reached the Bungun Bungun, a powerful tribe with arms
strong for throwing and voices unwearying.

This tribe would station themselves, at the bidding of
the wirreenuns, along the banks on each side of the dry
river, from its source downwards for some distance. They
made big fires, and put in these fires huge stones to heat.
When these stones were heated, the Bungun Bungun placed
some before each man, laying them on bark. Then they
stood expectant, waiting for the blood ball to reach them.
As soon as they saw this blood-red ball of fabulous size
roll into the entrance to the river, every man stooped, seized
a hot stone, and crying aloud, threw it with all his force
against the rolling ball. In such numbers and with such
force did they throw these stones that they smashed the
ball. Out gushed a stream of blood flowing swiftly down
the bed of the river. Louder and louder rose the cries of
the Bungun Bungun, who carried stones with them, following
the stream as it rushed past. They ran with leaps and
bounds along the banks, throwing in stones and crying
aloud without ceasing. Gradually the stream of blood,
purified by the hot stones, changed into flood water, of
which the cries of the Bungun Bungun warned the tribes
so that they might move their camps on to the high ground
before the water reached them. While the flood water was
running the Bungun Bungun never ceased crying aloud.
Even to this day, as a flood is coming, are their voices
heard, and hearing them the Daens say : " The Bungun

92 More Australian Tales

Bungun, or flood-frogs, are crying out. Flood water must
be coming." Then, " The Bungun Bungun are crying out.
Flood water is here."

And if the flood water comes down red and thick, the
Daens say that the Bungun Bungun must have let it pass
them without purifying it.

Eerin, the Small Grey Owl

Eerin the Daen was a very light sleeper, and when at
night an enemy tried to steal into the camp, to spear some
one of the tribe or crack a skull with his boondee, there
was no chance of his being able to do so if Eerin was there.
For no sooner did the enemy get within spear-shot of the
camp than Eerin would cry out : " Mil I Mil ! Mil ! " which
was, "Eye, Eye, Eye," meaning his tribe were to look out,
there was danger threatening.

And when at length Eerin died, the Daens all grieved
much, saying that now indeed their enemies would sneak
upon them, and they be unwarned, for none could hear as
did Eerin the light sleeper.

They placed the body of Eerin in a bark coffin which
they painted all over with red ochre. Before the ochre
dried the oldest wirreenun ran his thumb-nail from one
end to the other, then across the coffin, leaving thus divisions
in the ochre forming a cross. This done they corroboreed
round the coffin, singing one of the death chants. Towards
evening they lifted up the coffin and carried it to the grave
they had dug. The mourners were all painted, and had
leaves and feathers in their hair, dheal tree twigs round

94 More Australian Tales

their wrists, knees, ankles and waists, also through the
holes in the cartilage of the noses. They carried bunches
of dheal twigs too in their hands.

When they reached the grave they laid some logs in the
bottom, which they thickly covered with dheal twigs, on the
top of which they put the coffin, as a wail went up from
all assembled, the mournful death wail of the tribe which
rose and fell in wave-like cadences.

Then an old wirreenun stood up and spoke, telling them
that as Eerin was now, so some day they all would be,
and it behoved them to keep well the laws of Byamee lest,
when their spirits reached Bullimah, they were not allowed
to stay nor to wander at will, but were sent to the Eleanbah
Wondah, the abode of the wicked.

After this address more twigs were thrown on the coffin,
then the things belonging to the dead were placed in the
grave, rugs, weapons and food, which would be wanted. on
the journey to the sacred mountain, Oobi Oobi. .

While this was being done the oldest male relative stood
in the grave to guard the body from the Wondah until the
earth covered it.' He stood there while a chant somewhat
as follows was sung :

" We shall follow the bee to its nest in the goolabah ;
We shall follow it to its nest in the bibbil-tree.
Honey too shall we find in the goori-tree,
But Eerin the light sleeper will follow with us no longer."

Then the mourners wailed until the wirreenuns chanted
again :

" Many were the days when we took our nets to the river ;
Many and big were the cod-fish we caught in them,
But Eerin the light sleeper will go no more to the river ;
M o more will he rub himself with the oil of cod-fish,
Eerin will never eat again of the cod-fish."

Eerin, the Small Grey Owl 95

Then, as the wirreenuns paused, the wailing was loud
again until they began once more the dirge :

" We shall spear Bohrah on the moorillas,

And Dinewan shall fall when we throw,
. But Eerin will hunt with us no longer,

Never again will Eerin eat of our hunting.

Hunt shall we often, and oft shall we find ;

But the widow of Eerin will kindle no fires for his coming,"

Loud again was the wailing, then on went the voice of
the wirreenun :

"Never again shall the voice of the light sleeper
Cry ' Mil; Mil, Mil,' as an enemy nears us.
Cracked will our skulls be and speared our bodies.
Eerin can warn us no more with his cry, :,

Only his spirit can come to us ever,^ an offering let us now pour
to it."

Then with loud wailing, seizing stone knives and comeboos,
the mourners cut themselves, letting their blood drop into
the grave. Never before" was there such a blood offering.
Then the earth was thrown quickly into the grave, while
some of the mourners corroboreed round it, crooning a
dirge.

When the earth was filled in, all stood in a dense smoke
that the wirreenuns had made of Budta twigs, which was
to keep them free from the unseen spirits known to be
hovering round.

When the grave was filled in back to their new camp
went the women, for the old one was now gummarl, a place
of death, with a marked tree showing it was taboo.

No children, or women with children who could not
walk, were allowed to go to the funeral.

After the women left, all the men stood round the grave.

96 More Australian Tales

the oldest wirreenun at the head, which faced the east.
The men bowed their heads as if at a first Boorah, the
wirreenun lifted his, and, looking towards where Bullimah
was supposed to be, said : " Byamee, let in the spirit of
Eerin to Bullimah. Save him, we ask thee, from the
Eleanbah wundah, abode of the wicked. Let him into
BuUimah, there to roam as he wills, for Eerin was great
on earth and faithful ever to your laws. Hear, then, our
cry, O Byamee, and let Eerin enter the land of beauty, of
plenty, of rest. For Eerin was faithful on earth, faithful to
the laws you left us."

Then, standing round the grave, all wailed the goohnai,
or death dirge.

Then the men covered the grave with boughs of dheal
trees and swept a clear space all round it. By the tracks
on that space in the morning they would know of what
mah was he who had caused the death of Eerin. If on it
was the track of an iguana then had one of the Beewee
clan done it ; if the track of an emu, then was a dinewan
guilty.

The widow of Eerin had put mud over herself, daubing
her head and face with white. She slept beside a smoulder-
ing smoke all night.

Three days afterwards the Daens made a fire by the
river. They chased the widow and her sisters down to it.
The widow caught hold of a smoking bush from the fire,
put it under her arm, and jumped into the middle of the
water. As the smoking bush was going out She drank a
draught of the smoky water. Then she came out and
stood in the smoke of the fire. When she was thoroughly
enveloped in the smoke she called to those in the camp,

Eerin, the Small Grey Owl 97

and, looking towards her husband's grave, she called again.
Those in the camp called to her that his spirit, had answered;
she might speak now. She had been obliged to keep
silence, except for death wails, since Eerin's death.

Back she went to the camp. A big smoke was made,
and the whole camp smoked. Every time a stranger came
the widow made a smoke, until the time arrived when the
nearest of her husband's kin could claim her for his own.

For some months after the death of Eerin, every time a
stranger came to the camp, early the next morning he would
sing the goohnai, or dirge ; then each man would take part
in turn, until all were singing. Then they all moved out
of their camps and gradually closed round into a smaller
circle, when they would cease singing, sit down, and,
rocking their bodies to and fro, they would cry and
wail.

When the time of mourning was over an enemy came
again to attack them, but they were saved by hearing the
old cry of " Mil ! Mil! Mil!"

And so it often happened.

At last an enemy died and carried his hatred of them to
another world, whence he returned as a spirit to attack
them. But again they were saved by the warning cry of
"Mil! Mil! Mil!"

This cry they discovered was made by a little grey owl,
with black rings round its eyes, which, having warned the
camp, flew from it. The wundah, or evil spirit, saw it, and
said : " Why do you warn them ? Keep quiet next time I
go to sneak upon them. See, I have my boondee ; I will
kill one of the tribe quickly, and you can join me in my
feast of his flesh."

98 More Australian Tales

The bird promised silence, and the wundah went again;
into the camp. But just as he was going to raise his
boondee to deal a fatal blow, "Mil! Mil! Mil!" was cried
in the sleeper's ear. The owl had followed the wundah-
into the camp.

" Why did you do that ? " the wundah angrily asked.

"That I shall always do, even as when I was Eerin the
man, for did not my tribe spill freely the blood offering ?
Shall I not then save them from the wundah even as I did
from their old enemies ? By day I shall rest, and at night
I shall roam, hovering round their camps to guard them, by
my cry, when danger threatens theiii."

And so it has been ever since. The spirit of Eerin the
light sleeper is in the little grey owl, which is called
Eerin too, and ever warns its old tribe at night by crying,
"Mil! Mil! Mil!"

The Legend of Nar-oong-owie,
The Sacred Island

Ngroondoorie, the giver of laws, customs, and a religion to
the Southern tribes of aboriginals in South Australia,
became to them as a God, and his promise was ever
believed, that, if they followed the laws he had given them,
after death their spirits should follow his footsteps over
the island of Nar-oong-owie, and thence be translated, as
he was, to his home in the skies. The tradition was that
his departure took place somewhat as follows. His two
wives ran away from him. In going after them he crossed
what is now called Lake Albert, went on for some distance
over the Corrong to the sea, and along the beach past the
present Port Victor to Cape Jarvis. When he arrived
there he saw the fugitives wading through the water, being
when he sighted them about half-way across the channel —
which at that time was quite a shallow one — between the
mainland and Nar-oong-owie, as Kangaroo Island was then
called.

Enraged at his wives for running away from him,
Ngroondoorie determined to punish them. He bade the

loo More Australian Tales

water to rise up and drown them. With a terrific rush the
water rose, and the women were carried back towards the
mainland. They tried to swim against this tidal wave,
but were powerless to do so, and the terror-stricken pair
were drowned, and their bodies were turned into rocks
which were called Rine-jool-ang, and can be seen to this
day, and are known to the white people as the Pages or
Two Sisters. After his wives were drowned, Ngroondoorie
walked into the water and dived out towards the island.
Where he emerged from the water is a black patch three
or four yards in width. He went on to the island, and as
the day was hot he wished for a shade to rest under.
Seeing none, he made spring from the earth a she-oak tree
which is said to be the largest in Australia. He lay down
in the shade and tried to sleep, but could not, for as every
breeze blew he heard the wailing of his drowning wives'
voices through the tree-top. Finding he could get no rest,
he walked to the end of the island. He threw his spear
out into the sea, and immediately a reef of rocks came from
the island to where the spear dropped. He then threw
away all his other weapons and departed to his home in the
skies, where those who have kept the laws he gave the tribes
will some day join him. And to this day anyone who tries
to sleep under a she-oak tree will hear the wailing that
Ngroondoorie, the greatest of all, heard as he lay beneath
that giant tree he had made to shade him on Nar-oong-owie,
that island which ever afterwards was held as sacred to
him and the spirits of the dead by the Southern tribes of
South Australia.

Glo

ssar'

Bahloo, moon {masculine).
Bargie, grandmother.
Beereeun, a small grey lizard.
Berai Berai, The Boys (Orion's

sword and belt).
Bibbil, shiny-leaved box-tree.
Biggoon, water-rat.
Bilber, a large rat.
Bindeah, prickle or thorn.
Bingahwingul, needle-bush, u,
flowering shrub with roots from
which water can be drained.
Binguie, wooden vessel for holding

water.
Birrahgnooloo, woman's name (=

face like a hatchet-handle)
Bohrah, kangaroo.
Boolee, whirlwind,
Boondee, club-headed weapon.
Boorah, larger borah ring.
Borah or Boorah, sacred tribal
initiation rites.

Boulka, leak.

Bralgah, native companion, large
crane.

Bubahlarmay, game played by
jumping into the water with a
splash.

Bubbur, giant brown and yellow
snake.

Budta, rosewood-tree.

Budtah, salt.

BuUah Bullah, butterflies,

BuUai bullai, green parrot.

BuUimah, Byamee's camp {native
Elysium).

BuUimehdeehmundi, south-east.

Bungun Bunguu, frog.

Bunna, cannibal,

Byamee, big man {Creator, Cul-
ture hero).

Comebee, bag.

I02

Glossary

Comebeegeeboondarnghealdah,

grey moth.
Comeboo, tomahawk.
Coolah, tree with water-holding

roots,
Corroboree, tribal dance.

Daen, black fellow.

Daendeeghindamaylannah,
Venus the laughing star. Lit.,
"A laughing Plan."

Dardurr, shelter made of bark.

Dayoorl, magical speaking stone.

Deenyi, iron bark.

Deereeree, Willy wagtail.

Dheal, sacred tree.

Dindee, pointed stick.

Dinewan, emu.

Dinjerrah, west.

Dooloomai, thunder.

Doongairah, lightning.

Doowee, dream-spirit.

Dourandouran, north wind.

DuUoorah, small grey birds.

Dullaymullaylunnah, fend, ven-
detta.

Dumerh, brown pigeon.

Durrie, bread made from grass
seed.

Durroon, the night heron.

Eehu, rain.
Eer-dher, mirage.
Euahlayi, language of Narrin
blacks.

Euloowirree, rainbow.
Eurah, a drooping shrub.

Gahreemay, camp.

Garahgah, crajie.

Gayanday, man's name for voice
of borah spirit.

Gayardaree, platypus.

Gheeger Gheeger, the cold west
wind.

Gidya, tree of acacia species, which
gives forth a sickening smell in
damp weather, or if in bloom.

Girrahween, place of flowers.

Goodoo, codfish.

Goplabah, grey-leaved box-tree.

Goolahyool, water-holding tree.

Goolayahlee, pelican.

Goolmai, death dirge.

Goombeelgah, bark canoe.

Goomblegubbon, turkey or bus-
tard of the plains.

GoonaguUah, the sky.

Goonbean, specks on the leaves of
the bibbil.

Gooweera, small stick or bone,
possessing magical death-dealing
power.

Gougourgahgah, laughing jack-
ass.

Gubbah, good.

Gubbee, man's clan name.

Gubberah, sacred wonder-working
stone.

Guineeboo, redbreast.

Gl

ossar

y

103

Gummarl, plau where some one

has died.
Gundooee, solitary emu.
Gunyahnoo, south-east wind.
Gurburreh, north.

lUahwaylayah, good-bye {said by

CM going).
Innerah, mistress.

Kumbooran, east.
Kurreah, alligator.

Mah, totem.

Marmbeyah, white devil who

carries a green boondee.
May, wind.
Mayamah, stone.
Mayrah, wind.

Meamei, The Girls, Pleiades.
Mil, eye.

Minggah, spirit-haunted tree.
Mirrieh, poligonum.
Moodai, opossum.
Moogaray, hailstones.
Moorillah, pebbly ridge.
Mubboo, beefwood-tree,
Mubboon, small creek running

into larger one.
Muggil, stone knife.
MuUayerh, mate, companion.
MuUee MuUee, dream-spirit {of a

wirreenun).
Mulloka, water-spirit.
Mundehwaddah, north-west wind.

Munggheewurraywurraymul, sea-
gull.

Mungoonyarlee, iguana {largest
kind of)

Murgah Muggui, trap-door spider.

Murroomin, bark.

Noongah, kurragong tree.
Noongahburrah, belonging to the

Noongah country.
Noorahgogo, orange and blue

beetle.
Nooroonooroobin, south wind.
Noorumbah, hunting-ground.
Numbardee, mother.
Nurroolooan, south.
Nyunnoo, grass humpy.

Oobi Oobi, Byamee's mountain
dwelling-place in the other world.

Oodoolay, round rain-making
stone.

Oolah, reS, prickly lizard.

Oonah, give.

Ouyouboolooey, black snake.

Piggiebillah, spiny Echidna.
Purleemil, woman's name ( =
starry eyes).

Wa-ah, shell.

Wahlerh, manna running down

stems of branches.
Wahn, crow.

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many a day." Atheniemn. — " From first to last, almost without exception,
these stories are delightful." E. S. Hartland. — "The most delightful
book of fairy tales, taking form and contents together, ever presented to
children," Miss Thackeray. — " This delightful book. " Review of Reviews.
— " Nothing could be more fascinating."

Celtic Fairy Tales.

Scotsman. — " One of the best books of stories ever put together." Free-
man's Journal. — "An admirable selection." Ariel. — "Delightful stories,
exquisite illustrations by John D. Batten, and learned notes." Daily
Telegraph. — " A stock of delightful little narratives." Daily Chronicle. — " A
charming volume skilfully illustrated." Pall Mall Budget.— " P>. perfectly
lovely book. And oh! the wonderful pictures inside." Liverpool Daily
Post.— "Th.s best fairy book of the present season. "— 06«k Times.— •' Many
a mother will bless Mr. Jacobs, and many a door will be open to him from
Land's End to John o' Groat's."

More English Fairy Tales.

Athenaum. — " Will become more popular with children than its prede-
cessor." Notes and Queries. — "Delightful and in every respect worthy of
its predecessor." Glasgow Herald. — " A more delightful collection of fairy
tales could hardly be wished for." Glasgow Evening News. — "The new
volume of ' English Fairy Tales ' is worthy of the one that went before,
and this is really saying a great deal."

More Celtic Fairy Tales.

Daily Chronicle. — "A bright exemplar of almost all a fairy-tale book
should be." Saturday Review.—" Delightful for reading, and profitable for
comparison." Irish Daily Independent.—" Full of bold and beautiful illus-
trations." North British Daily Mail.— "The stories are admirable, and
nothing could be better in their way than thedesigns." News of the World.
— " Mr. Batten has a real genius for depicting fairy folk."

Indian Fairy Tales.

Dublin Daily Express.— " Vniqae. and charming anthology." Daily
News.— " Good for the schoolroom and the study." .Siac- " Illustrated
with a charming freshness of fancy. " Gloucester Journal.—" A book which
is something more than a valuable addition to folk-lore ; a book for the
student as well as for the child."— Sco^swian.—" Likely to prove a perfect
success." Literary World.—" Admirably grouped, and very enjoyable."

5

Specimen Illustration from the "First Book of Krab."

WORKS BY HIS HONOUR
JUDGE EDWARD ABBOTT PARRY.

Illustrated by ARCHIE MACGREGOR.

THE issue of Katawampus : its Treatment and Cicre, in the
Christmas Season of 1895, revealed a writer for children
who, in originality, spontaneity, and fulness of humour
as well as in sympathy with and knowledge of childhood, may be
compared, and not to his disadvantage, with Lewis Carroll. And,
as is the case with " Alice in Wonderland," an illustrator was
found whose sympathy with his author and capacity for rendering
his conceptions have won immediate and widespread recognition.
The later works due to the collaboration of Author and Illustrator
have fully maintained the level of their forerunner. A list of the
series and a specimen of the illustrations will be found below,
and a small selection from the press notices overleaf.

Got him this time

KATAWAMPUS : its Treatment and Cure. Second Edition,
96 pages, Cloth. 3s. 6d.

" One of the very best books of the season." — The World..
" A very delightful and original hook: •—Review of Reviews.
" The book is one of rare drollery, and the verses and pictures are capital
of their kind." — Saturday Review.

"We strongly advise both parents and children to read the book."

Guardian.
" A truly delightful little book, . . ."—Pall Mall Gazette.

" A tale full of jinks and merriment." — Daily Chronicle.

" The brightest, wittiest, and most logical fairy-tale we have read for a
long time." — Westminster Gazette.

" It's fun of the sort that children revel in and ' grown-ups ' also relish,
so spontaneous and irresistible is it." — Manchester Guardian.

•• A delightful extravaganza of the ' Wonderland ' type, but by no means
a slavish imitation."— Gte^oa/ Herald.

" Since 'Alice in Wonderland ' there has not been a book more calculated
to become a favourite in the nursery." — Baby.

KATAWAMPUS KANTICLES. Music by Sir J. F. Bridge,

Mus. Doc, Organist of Westminster Abbey. Words by His

Honour Judge E. A. Parry. Illustrated Cover, representing

Kapellmeister Krab, by Archie Macgregor. Royal 8vo,

Is.

" The reviewer's duty in this case is confined to considering the music of
Dr. Bridge : the pleasant task of praising Judge Parry's verses is super-
fluous. . . . The learned Dr. Bridge, of Westminster, who also wields the
thunders of the Albert Hall, the greatest living authority on Purcell, and
hard to beat at counterpoint, is also known as the most genial of musical
humorists. It was, therefore, a happy idea which inspired the witty
Judge of County Courts to seek the aid of ' Westminster ' Bridge in
this case, and the results have been remarkably happy. Dr. Bridge's
melodies are simple and engaging, and humorously descriptive where
necessary, without ever becoming unintelligible to the youngest hearer.
That they never descend below the dignity of music, and are thoroughly
sound, goes without saying," — Manchester Courier.

BUTTER-SCOTIA, or, a Cheap Trip to Fairy Land. i8o pages.
Map of Butter-Scotia, many Full-page Plates and Illustrations
in the Text. Bound in specially designed Cloth Cover. 6s.

" Leaving the sea, a pleasant passage through Starland and across the
Milky Way lands the voyagers in Fairyland, and Herald Houp-La invites
them to the Court of King Puck. Tomakin has a narrow escape of being
devoured by a vfitch. ... By Krab's instructions, Olga defeats Brassiface
the Ogre in a game of golf. ... With the Silver Niblick won from the
Ogre, Olga rescues Tomakin and defeats a dragon at Puck's Court, and
ultimately secures a masterly retreat from Butter-Scotia. The trial of
Tomakin, an election scene, and a Cabinet Council, are excellent fun. . , .
The plot of the story is admirably worked out, the incidents are full of
interest and excitement, and the humour is irresistible. " — Manchester Courier.

" The geographically-minded may be glad to know that ' Butter-Scotia is
near the North Pole, and not far from the Equator, in longitude looi and
any amount of latitude ! ' Moreover, it is ' bounded on the N. by the Gulf
of Funland, on the W. by Cocoa Nut Iceland, on the S. by the Caramel
Mountains, and on the E. by the A B Sea, or Sea of Troubles. Chief
exports — crackers and goodies.' " — Birmingham Gazette.

"Almost, if not quite, as good as ' Kata wampus.' The little folks for
whom it is written will say it is a jolly book. Olga, Molly, Kate, and
Tomakin turn up again, and make a voyage from Fleetwood to Butter-
Scotia — such a voyage and such wonderful people they see when they get
there : King Puck, a golfing ogre, witches, and a goblin newspaper reporter,
among them. It is right-down funny, is this book, and all the little ones
who have read ' Katawampus,' and many more, should read it. The
pictures are again by Archie Macgregor, who is, we suppose, a Butter-
Scotchman." — Pall Mall Gazette.

THE FIRST BOOK OF KRAB. Christmas Stories for
Children of All Ages. 132 pages, with many Full-page Plates
and Illustrations in the Text. Bound in specially desigiied
Cloth Cover. 3s. 6d.

" His Honour . . . has known how to make even the domestic black-
beetle interesting. His verses flow easily and ring pleasantly, and the
illustrations by Archie Macgregor are decidedly good, and some of them
strikingly so." — Athenceum.

" Krab is a goblin, who tells most delightful stories at Christmas-time to
a party of children. Perhaps the story of Undine the Wave is the prettiest
and most imaginative, but the Clockwork Child is very funny."

Educational Review.

" The half-dozen stories it comprises are as charming and fresh as ever.''

Star.

" In ' The First Book of Krab' Judge Parry seems to have eclipsed all
his former efforts, and has produced a book which will at once establish
itself as a favourite with children. . . . The stories are extravagantly non-
sensical, but original in conception and charmingly told."

Liverpool Daily Post.

" Krab is an old gentleman who has a delightful turn for story-telling,
Christmas stories especially, but I am bound to admit that they are the
real old-fashioned sort. Krab himself was old-fashioned, you see, he didn't
even ride a bicycle ; he travelled by a sleigh drawn by two white reindeer,
Friska and Floska, but he was a marvellous story-teller, so all wise young
people are advised to forget his old-fashioned qualities, and just listen to
the stories of Butterwops, Undine, and the Clockwork Child." — Madame.

THE BOOK OF WONDER VOYAGES.

Edited with Introduction and Notes by JOSEPH JACOBS.
Illustrated by J. D. BATTEN.

Square demy 8vo, sumptuously printed in large clear type on
specially manufactured paper, at the Ballantyne Press. With
Photogravure Frontispiece, and many Full-page Illustrations
and Designs in the Text. Specially designed Cloth Cover, 6s.

Contents. — The Argonauts — The Voyage of Maelduin — The
Journeyings of Hasan of Bassorah to the Islands of Wak-Wak —
How Thorkill went to the Under World and Eric the Far-
Travelled to Paradise.

2'his, the latest of the volumes in which Mr. Jacobs and Mr.
Batten have collaborated with such admirable results, will be
welcomed as heartily as its predecessors by the children of the
English-speaking world. A specimen of Mr. Batten's illustrations
is appended.

COMPANION VOLUME TO THE BOOK OF WONDER VOYAGES

Square demy 8vo, sumptuously printed in large clear type at the Ballantyne

Press. With many full-page Illustrations and Designs in the text,

specially designed Cloth Cover, 6s.

TJieWoi^LttAVoTii3ei\PuL

bcinq

^bgStor t) optbgTravcls anit
peri Is oF Fou** Brotbg rs K"' 9 ^^
oFSicil v wbo adventured tothe^
Nortly an^tbU)cSoufl)
€^8tan.A to tt|cWest

Written, bit Charles Squire
lUuS*^^ b n A q M a« j rggor

LONDON

David NoTT 2/0 Strand.

1898

NURSERY SONGS AND RHYMES OF ENGLAND.

Pictured in Black and White by Winifred Smith. Small
4to. Printed on hand-made paper. In specially designed
Cloth Cover, 3s. 6d.

Some ipress motices of "IRurserB Songe an£) IRbBines."

Literary World. — "Delightfully illustrated."

Athenisum. — " Very cleverly drawn and humorous designs."

Manchester Guardian. — " All the designs are very apt and suited to the
comprehension of a child."

Scotsman. — " The designs are full of grace and fun, and give the book an
artistic value not common in nursery literature."

Globe. — " The drawings are distinctly amusing and sure to delight
children."

Star. — " Really a beautiful book. . . . Winifred Smith has revelled into
old rhymes, and young and old alike will in their turn revel in the results
of her artistic revelry."

Pall Mall Gazette. — " No book of nursery rhymes has charmed us so
much."

Magazine of Art. — " Quite a good book of its kind."

Woman. — "Miss Smith's drawings are^now celebrated and are indeed
very beautiful, decorative, and full of naive humour."

14

WORKS BT MRS. ERNEST RADFORD.
SONGS FOR SOMEBODY. Verses by Dollie

Radford. Pictures by Gertrude Bradley. Square
crown 8vo. Six Plates printed in colour by Edmund
Evans, and 36 Designs in monochrome. Coloured Cover
by Louis Davis. 3s. 6d.

GOOD NIGHT. Verses by Dollie Radford.

Designs by Louis Davis. Forty pages entirely designed by
the artist and pulled on the finest and the thickest cartridge
paper. Boards and canvas back with label, 2s. 6d.
Some ipress IFlotlces.

Daily Chronicle. — " As far as we know no one else sings quite like Mrs.
Radford ; hers is a bird's note — thin, high, with a sweet thrill in it, and the
thrill is a home thrill, a nest thrill."

Commonwealth. — " We have read with pure enjoyment Mrs. Radford's
slight but charming cycle of rhymes."

Star, — "A tender spirit of motherhood inspires Mrs. Radford's simple
little songs."

Review of Reviews. — "Very charming poems for children not unworthy
even to be mentioned in the same breath with Stevenson's ' Child's Garden
of Verses. ' "

Aihenaum. — " 'Good Night' is one of the daintiest little books we have
seen for years. The verses are graceful and pretty, and the illustrations
excellent. It will please both young and old."

Literary World. — " Charming little songs of childhood. "

New Age. — "Mrs. Radford is closely in touch with a child's mind, and
her ideal child is a nice, soft, loving little creature whom we all want to
caress in our arms."

Artist. — " Since Blake died never has a book been produced which can
so truly be described as a labour of love to the artist as ' Good Night.' "

MEDI/EVAL legends. Being a Gift-Book to

the Children of England, of Five Old-World Tales from

France and Germany. Demy 8vo. Designed Cloth Cover,

3s. 6d.

Contents. — The Mysterious History of Melusina— The Story of

.^sop— The Rhyme of the Seven Swabians— The Sweet and

Touching Tale of Fleur and Blanchefleur— The Wanderings of

Duke Ernest.

Some press iftotices.

Saturday Review. — " A capital selection of famous legends."
Times. — " There can be no question as to the value of this gift."
Morning Post. — " Full of romantic incident, of perilous adventure by land

and sea." - . ui

GMay^'aM.— "This delightful volume. . . . In all respects admirable.
World. — " An elegant and tasteful volume."

15

THE HAPPY PRINCE, and other Tales. By Oscar

Wilde. ii6 pages, small 4to. Beautifully printed in old-
faced type, on cream-laid -paper, with wide margins. Bound
in Japanese Vellum Cover, printed in red and black. With
three full-page Plates by Walter Crane, and eleven
Vignettes by Jacomb Hood. Second Edition. 3s. 6d.

Some press Bottces.

Christian Leader. — "Beautiful exceedingly; charmingly devised — exqui-
sitely told."

Universal Review. — " Heartily recommended."

Athenceum. — " Mr. Wilde possesses the gift of writing fairy tales in a rare
degree."

Dublin Evening Mail. — "A beautiful book in every sense.''

Glasgow Herald. — " It is difficult to speak too highly of these tales."

FAIRY TALES FROM THE FAR NORTH. By

p. C. AsBjoRNSEN. Translated by H. L. Br^kstad. With
94 Illustrations by E. Werenskiold, T. Kittelsen, and H.
SiNDiNG. Small 4to (" Wonder Voyages " size), beautifully
printed at the Ballantyne Press on specially manufactured
paper. Cloth, designed Cover. 6s.

*^L* The raciest and quaintest oj stories, the most spirited
and humorous of illustrations.

THE GIANT CRAB, and other Tales from Old India.

Retold by W. H. D. Rouse. Profusely Illustrated by Wl
Robinson. Square crown 8vo, beautifully printed at the
Ballantyne Press on special paper. Designed Cloth Cover.
3s. 6d.

*** Adaptation for English children of Tales from the Oldest
Story Book in the world, the Jatakas, or Birth-stories of
Buddha.

i6

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