K. Langloh Parker

“ The blacks are a bit Celtic in that way; some are real fire-eaters, always spoiling for a row. But in most everyday rows the feelings are more damaged than the bodies.
An old gin in a rage will say more in a given time, without taking breath, than any human being I have ever seen; it is simply physiologically marvellous. From the noise you would think murder at least would result. You listen in dread of a tragedy; you hear the totem and multiplex totems of her opponent being scoffed at, strung out one after another, deadly insult after deadly insult. ”

“ I, Byamee, whom all the tribes hold in honour, have thrice bade you Mahthi cease your chatter and laughter. But you heeded me not. To my voice were added the voices of the Wirreenun of other tribes. But you heeded not. Think you the Wirreenun will make any of your tribe young men when you heed not their words? No, I tell you. From this day forth no Mahthi shall speak again as men speak. You wish to make noise, to be a noisy tribe and a disturber of men; a tribe who cannot keep quiet when strangers are in the camp; a tribe who understand not sacred things. ”

“ But you can't describe a corroboree, it wants the scenic effects of the grim bush: tapering, dark Belahs, Coolabahs contorted into quaint shapes and excrescences by extremes of flood and drought, and their grotesqueness lit up by the flickering fires, until the trees themselves look like demons of the night, and the painted black fellows their attendant spirits stealing into the firelight from what seems a vast, dark, unknown Beyond. ”

“ What mothers are ye to leave your young to a stranger, and that stranger a Gooloo, ever a treacherous race? Did we not go forth to gain food for you and our children? Saw ye ever your husbands return from the chase empty handed? Then why, when ye knew we were gone hunting, must ye too go forth and leave our helpless ones to a stranger? Oh, evil, evil indeed is the time that has come when a mother forgets her child. Stay ye in the camp while we go forth to hunt for our lost Wahroogahs. Heavy will be our hands on the women if we return without them. ”

“ But Goonur the husband said, "In truth did you save me, my mother, and these my wives rejoice that you did. They too, as I was, were deceived by the bandicoot's nest, the work of an enemy yet to be found. See, my mother, do not the looks of love in their eyes, and words of love on their lips vouch for their truth? We will be as we have been, my mother, and live again in peace." ”

“ Their spirits have never rested, but come out at all times from the huge fissure in the ridges where their bodies were put. Their anguished cries as the stones and earth fell on them are still to be heard echoing through the scrub there; and sometimes it is said one, keener sighted than his fellows, sees their spirit forms flitting through the Budtha bushes, and hears again their tragic cries, as they disappear once more into the fathomless fissure. ”

“ The Milky Way is a warrambool, or water overflow; the stars are the fires, and the dusky haze the smoke from them, which spirits of the dead have lit on their journey across the sky. In their fires they are cooking the mussels they gather where they camp. ”

“ When he had crossed the creek he picked up a big stone, and he threw it into the water, saying, "Now, you cowardly daens, you would not do what I, Bahloo, asked you to do, and so forever you have lost the chance of rising again after you die. You will just stay where you are put, like that stone does under the water, and grow, as it does, to be part of the earth. If you had done what I asked you, you could have died as often as I die, and have come to life as often as I come to life. But now you will only be black fellows while you live, and bones when you are dead." ”

“ Every bird wears his gayest plumage and sings his sweetest song to attract a mate, and in pairs they go to build their nests. And still Mayrah softly blows until the land is one of plenty; then Yhi the sun chases her back whence she came, and the flowers droop and the birds sing only in the early morning. For Yhi rules in the land until the storms are over and have cooled him, and winter takes his place to be blown away again by Mayrah the loved of all, and the bringer of plenty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Douran Doura woos the Coolabah, and Kurrajong, who flower after the hot north wind has kissed them.
The women winds have no power to make trees fruitful. They can but moan through them, or tear them in rage for the lovers they have stolen, whom they can only meet twice a year at the great corroboree of the winds, when they all come together, heard but never seen; for Mayrah, the winds, are invisible, as were the Mayrah, the tribe who in bursting gave them birth.
Yarragerh and Douran Doura are the most honoured winds as being the surest rain-bringers. ”

“ But in spite of their sadness the bush nights are lovely, when the landscapes are glorified by the magic of the moon. Even the gum leaves are transmuted into silver as the moonlight laves them, making the blacks say the leaves laugh, and the shimmer is like a smile. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You come back alone. You bring no honey. Your look is fierce, as of one who fights, and your arms are covered with blood. Tell me, I say, where are my daughters?"
"Ask me not, Bilber. Ask Wurranunnah the bee, he may know. Narahdarn the bat knows nothing." And he wrapped himself in a silence which no questioning could pierce. Leaving him there, before his camp, the mother of the Bilbers returned to her dardurr and told her tribe that her daughters were gone, and Narahdarn, their husband, would tell her nothing of them. ”

“ Comets are a spirit of evil supposed to drink up the rain-clouds, so causing a drought; their tails being huge families all thirsty, so thirsty that they draw the river up into the clouds.
Every natural feature in any way pronounced has a mythical reason for its existence, every peculiarity in bird life, every peculiarity in the trees and stones. ”

“ Soon came a few big drops of rain, then a big wind, and as that lulled, more rain. Then came thunder and lightning, the air grew bitterly cold, and there came a pitiless hailstorm, hailstones bigger than a duck's egg fell, cutting the leaves from the trees and bruising their bark. ”

“ The Bralgah birds have a Boorah ground at the back of our old horse-paddock, a smooth, well-beaten circle, where they dance the grotesque dances peculiar to them, which are really most amusing to watch, somewhat like a set of kitchen lancers into which some dignified dames have got by mistake, and a curious mixture is the dance of dignity and romping. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But such pups as surely man never looked at before. The bodies of dogs, and the heads of pigs, and the fierceness and strength of devils. And gone is the life of a man who meets in a scrub of Noondoo an earmoonan, for surely will it slay him. Not even did Byamee ever dare to go near the breed of his old dog. And Byamee, the mighty Wirreenun, lives for ever. But no man must look upon his face, lest surely will he die. So alone in a thick scrub, on one of the Noondoo ridges, lives this old man, Byamee, the mightiest of Wirreenun. ”

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

“ So long and so fierce was the storm that the young men must have perished had they not been changed into birds. First they were changed into birds and afterwards into stars in the sky, where they now are, Gidgereegah and Quarrian with the kangaroo between them, still bearing the names that they bore on the earth. ”

“ Not recognising the tyranny of custom, though themselves victims to it, they ignore, as a rule, the religion into which the black is born, and by which he lived, in much closer obedience to its laws than we of this latter-day Christendom. It seems to me, if we cannot respect the religion of others we deny our own. If we are powerless to see the theism behind the overlying animism, we argue a strange ignorance of what crept over other faiths, in the way of legends and superstitions quite foreign to the simplicity of the beginnings. ”

“ Many and ripe are the bumbles hanging now on the humble trees; red is the fruit of the grooees, and opening with ripeness the fruit of the guiebets. Yet you sit in the camp and hunger, until your husbands return with the dinewan and bowrah they have gone forth to slay. Go, women, and gather of the plenty that surrounds you. ”