Chapter 6 The “Debbil-Debbil” Dance

We were going to a Debbil-debbil dance. The King himself had brought the

invitation to me in the garden.

“Missus,” he said, “spose you come longa Debbil-debbil dance, eh?”

“No, thank you, Goggle Eye,” I answered. “Might it the Debbil-debbils

carry me off?”

He roared with delight at my joke and explained, “this one gammon

Debbil-debbil.”

“Oh well,” I said, “if you are only going to have gammon Debbil-debbils

at your party, I come.”

“Dank you please, Missus,” he said, guessing at my meaning.

Then he asked if I would go and see the dancers being dressed for the

performance, and I said I would, for I always like to see a blackfellow

getting into clothes of any sort. I went in the afternoon and watched,

noticing directly I arrived that two of the gentlemen had headaches.

Poor Bett-Bett had to stay at home because of Goggle Eye. It took two or

three men to dress one dancer properly. They laid him flat on his back

to begin with, and pricked him all over with sharp stones and pieces

of glass. As they sat pricking Billy Muck, they reminded me of cooks

pricking sausages for frying.

When little beads of blood oozed out, they were smeared all over the

man, face and all. Then tiny white cockatoo’s feathers were stuck up and

down and round and round him, and the blood was used as gum. They made

wonderful patterns all over his body, back and front, ending up with

twirligigs down both arms and legs. The gum stuck splendidly; if you

want to find out how well blood sticks, cut your finger and tie it up

with cotton wool.

The face also was covered with down, and a huge helmet, with a long horn

of emu’s quills, was fixed firmly on the head.

The finishing touch was a wreath of leaves at each ankle. Ordinary

leaves were not nearly good enough for a Debbil-debbil dance. So special

magic men, and some extra special lubras, went “out bush,” and bewitched

a tree with all sorts of capers, and prancings, and pointings and magic.

Then they gathered some leaves and carried them in for the dancers to

wear. It was wise to do this, for then nothing could possibly go wrong

with the corrobboree.

By the time everybody was dressed, they looked truly awful; and I

pleased them immensely by pretending to be frightened of these “gammon

Debbil-debbils.”

I begged them not to carry me off, and they shouted with delight,

and waved sticks at me, and danced about and said, “Me Debbil-debbil

alright, me real fellow,” and tried hard to look fierce in spite of

their grins. Poor old Goggle Eye was nearly bent double with laughing;

for if there is one thing a blackfellow likes better than anything else

it is a “play-about,” as they call fun and nonsense.

After supper we arrived at the party—four white men and a woman! The

moon had risen, and innumerable fires were flickering among the trees;

and everything was ready to begin.

His Majesty the King, and the Lords in Waiting, received us with a

broad grin. Then they each stood on one leg and chuckled. Whenever a

blackfellow has nothing better to do with his legs, he always stands on

one, and lays the sole of the other foot against his knee, making his

legs look exactly like the figure 4, with an extra long stem. I think

our hosts chuckled because they did not know what else to do.

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I thought, perhaps, that some of the old men might not be too pleased

to have me at the party, and I said so to Goggle Eye. “Me bin talk,” he

answered, with a wave of his hand, that showed he was in every way King.

The lubras were sitting near, ready to sing and beat time for the

dancers. I think in the excitement of getting ready for the party,

they must have forgotten to dress themselves, for they had nothing on,

excepting a few feathers and things that had been left over from the

men’s costumes. As nobody seemed to notice this, I suppose it did not

matter.

A great big place had been cleared of all sticks and stones, and the

whole tribe and their visitors stood round it, armed with spears. This

particular patch of ground was near to a very sacred stone, and unless

this corrobboree was danced there it would not be of much good. That was

why it was so near the homestead.

The lubras began to sing a strange weird song, and a few blackfellows

sounded the bamboo trumpets, and then the dancing commenced. It was very

tiring both to dancers and onlookers. Up every one lifted a leg, and

down every one stamped a leg and gave a fearful yell; then Billy Muck,

who was a little way off from the dancers, gave a jump and a little

run—and that was the First Figure!

Up went the legs again, and down went the legs again; we heard another

yell, and Billy Muck gave another jump and run—and that was the Second

Figure.

The Third Figure was just the same, and so were the Fourth, Fifth,

Sixth, and as many more as you liked to count.

“What name, Goggle Eye?” I asked, meaning that I wished him to explain

it to me.

He said this was to teach the young men of the tribe that Debbil-debbils

would chase them if they did wrong. You see the dancers were supposed to

be fearful Debbil-debbils and were pretending to catch Billy Muck. They

kept acting this object lesson for nearly two hours, and the old men

explained what it meant to the pupils, but I got very tired of it.

I amused myself with watching the lubras as they sang and swayed about,

noticing after a while that Bett-Bett was among them, singing and

swaying and having a real good all-round time. She must have crept along

after us, but as she was sitting with her back to Goggle Eye and his

eyes were fixed on the dancers, I suppose it was all right. Anyway no

Debbil-debbils came along.

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Suddenly there was a wild weird shriek, quite near us. It came so

unexpectedly, and was so unearthly, that I jumped and thought of

Bett-Bett and Goggle Eye and Debbil-debbils. Everything was so strange

around us, that I believe if they had been carried off I should have

looked on without any surprise.

Every one stopped singing and dancing, and Goggle Eye whispered that it

was the voice of the great sacred Bullroarer, calling to say that it was

time to take the young boys away into the bush. There were four or five

of them at this corrobboree, and they were to be taught their first real

lesson to-night. After it they would be kept away by themselves, in a

special camp “out bush,” and when they came back they would be treated

as men.

The Bullroarer is a spindle-shaped piece of sacred stone, and when swung

round and round above the head with a string, it shrieks and screams and

groans. Only the wise men may touch it, and of course they are the only

people who really understand all it says. Every man has an imitation

bullroarer, which he often swings to make it speak, for this pleases the

Debbil-debbil spirit of the sacred Bullroarer. After the voice of the

Debbil-debbil had spoken, a few of the very important people began to

slip away, to prepare for the real corrobboree; for the dance was only a

sort of introduction.

Goggle Eye gave us a hint to go home, and we took it; we had our

revolvers with us, but it is always wise to take a blackfellow’s hint,

particularly when he says that a very secret, sacred corrobboree is

about to begin.

As we said good-night, Goggle Eye and old Jimmy presented me with two

extraordinary-looking broad flat sticks, with black streaks and white

dots on them.

“Him goodfellow-stick, that one,” they explained, and it was not till

some time after that I found out they had paid me the very highest

compliment a blackfellow can pay a “white missus,” for no ordinary woman

is allowed even to look at these sticks.

I often wish I had said “Dank you, please,” a little more politely and

gratefully for them. A few mornings after the Debbil-debbil Dance, I

saw Goggle Eye hide something behind an ant-bed, and then walk up to the

house. When he saw me he asked if he might “go bush” for a walk-about,

as he was needed at a corrobboree at Duck Creek. I asked him how long

he would be away and he said, “One fellow, two fellow, big mob sleep,”

meaning that he would be away for a great number of nights or sleeps

before he had finished his business.

Then he showed me a little bit of stick with notches on it, and said it

was a blackfellow’s letter-stick, or as he called it, a “yabber-stick.”

It was round, not flat like most other letters, and was an invitation

to a corrobboree, and there were notches on it explaining what sort of

corrobboree it was, and saying that it was to be held at Duck Creek.

There was some other news marked on it which Goggle Eye told me, and

then he sold it to me for some “chewbac,” and I have it to-day, and

anyone may see it who wishes. Then he sat down for a yarn, and I asked

him why Jackeroo would never eat turkey, and why he always said he

mustn’t eat it, because it was his brother.

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Goggle Eye said, that was quite right, and that turkeys were Jackeroo’s

brothers, for he and turkeys both had turkey spirits inside them, and

of course no one could eat his brother. Everybody has the spirit of some

animal inside him, he said. If you have a kangaroo spirit, you belong

to the kangaroo family or totem; and you must not eat your brothers the

kangaroos. If you have a snake’s or an eagle’s spirit, you belong to the

snake’s or eagle’s family, and do not eat your brothers the snakes or

the eagles. Whatever spirit you may have, you belong to its family or

totem, and they are your brothers, and you do not eat them. “All day

likee that,” said old Goggle Eye.

I asked him how each person knew which spirit was inside him, and he

said that their mothers told them. You see, she knew where she had

“caught” her piccaninny. If a piccaninny came to her in a snake’s-spirit

country, it had a snake spirit, and if it came to her in a

kangaroo’s-spirit country, it had a kangaroo’s spirit, and so on. It all

depended on where you came from. It didn’t matter what your mother and

father were; your mother might have a snake’s spirit, and your father

might have a wallaby’s spirit; but if you came from a cockatoo’s-spirit

country, you had to have a cockatoo’s spirit; just as peaches come from

peach trees, and plums from plum trees.

Near the homestead was the kangaroo’s-spirit country, and of course all

the children who came from there had kangaroos’ spirits, but those who

came from the Long Reach, not a mile away, had honey-bees’ spirits.

Goggle Eye said you learnt all this at corrobborees. At the

kangaroo-corrobboree the head man of the kangaroo men dressed up, and

pretended to be a kangaroo. After a little while he suddenly changed

into a man, and stood up, and looked like one, and said he really was a

man now. Then he dug a little hole and poured water into it. After this

he called a number of kangaroo-spirit men to him and offered them the

flesh of a kangaroo, but they said it was the flesh of their brother,

and that they must not eat it.

The wise men then explained that this was to teach them that once, long

long ago, a big giant kangaroo had come to the Roper River country, and

changed himself into a man. When he got thirsty he dug a hole, and

water flowed up into it for him to drink, and that was really how the

homestead “billabong” came.

After a while this kangaroo man amused himself with making spirits, but

as he was really a kangaroo spirit himself, he could only make kangaroo

spirits. By and by he noticed that some of them had got into kangaroos

and some into little black children, so he called them all together and

told them that they all had kangaroo spirits and were really brothers

and must never eat each other.

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After this explanation all the young men of the tribe understood

of course that they must not eat their animal brothers. At

honey-bee-corrobborees, the history of the honey-bees was taught, and at

each animal corrobboree, the history of each totem, for corrobborees, as

I said before, were the schools of the blackfellows.

Goggle Eye, you see, was one of the wisest of the blackfellows, and as

he said this was true, perhaps it was. I know that “out-bush” we had

seen portraits of the great-great-greatest grandfather of the Kangaroo

men, and of the Fish and of the Iguana people, drawn on rocks and trees

by the artists of the tribe.

When Goggle Eye had finished his history lesson, I gave him some sugar

in a calico bag, and he tied it carefully round his neck. He said the

ants couldn’t get at it there. Then I gave him a red handkerchief and

some tobacco and hairpins. The blacks love hairpins, they find them so

useful to dig up grubs with.

As Goggle Eye still stayed about, I said good-bye, and turned to leave

him.

“Missus,” he called after me, “me bin lose ‘em pipe.” Something in his

face made me suspicious. I went and looked behind the antbed to see what

he had hidden, and found his pipe.

“Here you are, Goggle Eye,” I said; “me bin good fellow, me bin find

him.”

I expected him to look ashamed of himself, but he didn’t—not a little

bit! He sat down and laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks at

the joke of it all, and that made me laugh too. Of course in the end

Goggle Eye got a new pipe, and went off “bush” with it in his mouth. As

he went through the gate he turned and waved it at me, and that was the

last time I saw him looking merry-hearted and happy.