CHIEFLY AS TO FUNERALS AND MOURNING
I was awakened one morning on the station by distant wailing.
A wailing that came in waves of sound, beginning slowly and lowly, to
gain gradually in volume until it reached the full height or limit of
the human voice, when gradually, as it had risen, it fell again. No
shrieking, just a wailing inexpressibly saddening to hear.
I lay for some minutes not realising what the sound was, yet penetrated
by its sorrow. Then came consciousness. It was from the blacks' camp,
and must mean death. Beemunny, the oldest woman of the camp, who for
weeks had been ill, must now be dead.
Poor old Beemunny, who was blind and used to get her
great-granddaughter, little Buggaloo, to lead her up to the tree
outside my window, under whose shade she had spent so many hours,
telling me legends of the golden age when man, birds, beasts, trees,
and elements spoke a common language. But the day before I had been to
the camp to hear how she was. The old women were sitting round her; one
of the younger ones told me her end had nearly come.
The Boolees, or whirlwinds, with the Mullee Mullees of her enemies in,
had been playing round and through the camp for days, they said,
watching to seize her fleeting spirit--a sure sign the end was near.
That night surely would come Yowee, the skeleton spirit, with the big
head and fiery eyes, whose coming meant death.
Last night more than one of the blacks had dreamt of an emu, which
meant misfortune to one of that totem, which was Beemunny's.
As Yellen spoke in a hushed sad voice, suddenly, though no breath of
wind was stirring, sprang up on the edge of the camp a boolee, rearing
its head as if it were a living thing. Round it whirled, snatching the
dead leaves of the Coolabahs, swirling them with the dust it gathered
into a spiral column, which sped, as if indeed a spirit animated it,
straight to the camp of the dying woman. Round and round it eddied, a
dust-devil dancing a dance of death.
The watchers drew nearer to Beemunny, who was past heeding even the
spirits of evil.
The women in other camps clutched their children to them, but spoke no
word. All was silent but the swirling leaves as the column gathered
them. Finding the deathbed guarded, the boolee turned sharply from the
camp and sped away down the road, dissolving on the poligonum flat in
the distance.
Yellen gave a sigh of relief.
But now her fears were verified; Beemunny was dead.
Poor old Beemunny! How the vanities of youth cling to one; how we are
'all sisters under the skin.'
She was ever so old, she was blind, her face was scarred with wrinkles,
yet one of her beauties remained, and she absolutely joyed in its
possession: it was her hair. Her hair was thick and fuzzy, when combed
would stand nearly straight out, which is quite unusual with the native
women's hair in that part. Beemunny one day asked one of the younger
women if I had ever heard what a lot of lovers she had had in her
youth, what fights there had been over her, and all because of her
beautiful hair.
Poor old Beemunny! Something in my own woman nature went out to her in
sympathy. She was old, she was ugly, her husband was dead, as were all
men to her.
Poor old Beemunny! Having once learnt her vanity, I never passed her
without saying 'Gubbah Tekkul!' 'Beautiful hair!' at which she would
beam and toss her head.
At sunrise came again the wailing; the singing of the Goohnai, or
dirge, wherein are enumerated all the multiplex totems of the deceased,
crooned in a wailing way, and each fresh person who comes to the camp
sings this dirge again. In olden times all would have been painted in
full war paint, weapons in hand, to see the corpse.
I was given permission to go to the funeral, old Bootha was to take me.
I heard that Beemunny had died early in the night. Her daughter and
nearest of kin had sat all night beside her body, with each a hand on
it to guard her from the spirits. She was now in her bark coffin, round
which were her own blankets to be buried with her. The coffin was made
of bark cut off right round a tree, split on one side from end to end;
the body was placed in this, then the bark lapped over it, the ends
were blocked up with other pieces, the whole secured by ropes. All day
until the burial some one of kin stayed beside the coffin, little fires
of Budtha kept smoking all the while. In the afternoon old Bootha came
for me, and we set out.
First in the procession marched two old men of the tribe, behind them
some young men, then those in charge of the coffin and the two nearest
women relations, immediately behind them the old women, then the young
women. No women with babies were allowed to go, nor any children. I
came last with old Bootha.
The procession moved along an old winding track on the top of a
moorilla, or pebbly ridge, pine-trees overarching in places carving the
sky into a dome--a natural temple through which we walked to the
burial-ground.
Every now and then we heard a bird note, which made the women glance at
each other and say, first, 'Guadgee,' then 'Bootha,' as it came again,
and a third time 'Hippitha.' To my uneducated ear the note seemed the
same each time. I asked Bootha what it was. She told me it was the note
of a little bird, something like a wren, called Durrooee, in whose
shape the spirits of dead women revisited the earth. It seems that
Numbardee, the first woman, was, like Milton's Eve, a caterer; she
acquired art in beating the roots of plants into flat cakes much
esteemed; she was never to be met without some, carrying them always in
a bag across her shoulders.
And Byamee was so pleased with her for always having food for the
hungry that, when at length she died, he allowed her to revisit her old
gahreemai, or camp, her spirit returning in the form of the little
honey-eater bird, Durrooee; and all women after her had a like
privilege if they had done their duty in life. These birds are sacred;
no one must harm them, nor even imitate their cry. It would be hard to
hurt them, for the spirit in them is so strong. If any one even takes
up a stick or stone to throw at them, hardly is it raised from the
ground when the would-be assailant is forcibly knocked over, though he
sees nothing but the little bird he was about to attack. Then he knows
the bird must be a spirit bird, and perhaps seeing him look at her, the
bird calls a woman's name, then he knows whose spirit it is.
A black boy on the station was badly hurt by a fall from a tree. It had
seemed strange that such a good climber should fall. The blacks said it
was because there was a Durrooee's nest in that tree, the spirit had
knocked him down, and for a time so paralysed the man with him that he
could not move to his assistance. Needless to say, they have avoided
that tree since.
In the distance we heard the sound of the grave being dug. None of the
same totem as the dead person must dig the grave. The coffin was put
down beside the grave, the daughter and other nearest women relations
stayed with it, the other women went away into the bush in one
direction, some of the men in another.
Old Hippi heaped up some Budtha twigs he had gathered, I noticed as we
came along; these he set fire to, and made a dense smoke which hung low
over the open grave and spread over the old graves.
Hippi smoked himself in this smoke. The women came back with arms full
of small branches of the sacred Dheal tree, these they laid beside the
grave, then sat down and broke them into small twigs; the old women had
twigs put through the bored hole in their noses.
The men came back with some pine saplings; two of these they laid at
the bottom of the grave, which was about five feet deep. On these pines
they spread strips of bark, then a thick bed of Dheal twigs; then a
woman handed a bag containing the belongings of the dead woman--boogurr
they were called--to the oldest male relative, who was standing in the
grave; he placed it as a pillow at one end. Then Hippi and the
daughter's husband took each an end of the coffin and lowered it into
the grave; the daughter cried loudly as they did so. Over the coffin
they laid a rug, and on the rug they placed Beemunny's yam stick. Hippi
signalled to the daughter, who then came with the other women close to
the edge of the grave. She sat at one end, looked over into the grave,
and called out: 'My mother! Oh, my mother! Come back to me, my mother!
My mother that I have been with always, why did you leave me?' Then she
wailed the death-wait, which the other women caught up. As the wail
died away, Hippi said:
'She has gone from us; never as she was will she return.
Never more as she once did will she chop honey.
Never more with her gunnai dig yams.
She has gone from us; never as she was to return.'
As he finished all the women wailed again, and loudest of all the
daughter. Then the old man in the grave said:
'Mussels there are in the creek and plenty,
But she who lies here will dig no more.
We shall fish as of old for cod-fish,
But she who lies here will beg no more oil,
Oil for her hair, she will want no more.'
Then again the women wailed.
Old Hippi said, as the other man, in a sort of recitative
'Never again will she use a fire.
Where she goes fires are not.
For she goes to the women, the dead women,
And women can make no fires.
Fruit is there in plenty and grass seed,
But no birds nor beasts in the heaven of woman.'
Again the women wailed, wail after wail. Then they handed the remaining
twigs of Dheal to the men, who laid them on the top of the coffin, then
bark again over the twigs, and pine saplings on them, on top some old
rugs.
While this was being done the old, old gins danced slowly a corroboree
step round the edge of the grave, crooning a Goohnai-wurrai or dirge.
Then the men began to throw in the earth, the oldest male relative of
the deceased standing in the grave to guard the body until the earth
covered the coffin. As thud after thud went the earth in, the daughter
shrieked and swayed over as if to fall into the grave, but her friend
drew her back. She called 'Mother! mother!' took a sharp stone which
was beside her and hit it against her head until the blood gushed out.
They took the stone from her. There she sat rocking her body to and
fro, wailing all the time, the other women wailing too, until the grave
was quite covered in.
When it was filled in Hippi made another big smoke, thoroughly smoked
himself, calling to all the men to do the same.
An old woman made a big smoke behind where the women were sitting; she
called them one by one and made them stand in the thick of it for a
while.
Hippi said something to her. I caught the word 'Innerah'--they called
me Innerah, which meant literally a woman with a camp of her own. The
old woman gave the smoke fire a stir, and out at once came a thick
column of smoke circling round my guest and myself.
They covered the grave with logs and boughs and then swept round it.
All was over, we turned homewards. As we did so a flock of screeching
gilahs flew over, their bright rose colouring lighting up the sombre
scene where the only colour was that of the dark pines silhouetted
against a sky from which the blue had now faded. Going home Bootha told
me that the smoking process was to keep the spirits away, and to
disinfect us from any disease the dead might have; and she said had we
not been smoked the spirits might have followed us back to the house.
They would at once change their camp; the old one would be gummarl--a
tabooed place; but before they left it they would burn smoke fires
there to scare away the spirits.
I asked her why they swept round the grave. She said, in case the dead
person had been poisoned or killed by magic; and, indeed, so little do
they allow the possibility of death from natural causes, they even said
old Beemunny had been given poison in her honey by an old-time rejected
lover. Well, by sweeping round the grave they would see what track was
on the swept place next morning, and according to that they would know
to what totem the murderer belonged. If the track should be an
iguana's, then one of the Beewee, or iguana totem, was guilty; if an
emu, then one of the Dinewan, or emu totem, and so on.
Old Hippi joined me a little further on. He explained that the service
was not as it would have been some years ago. That I knew, because when
I first went to the station I had seen them going to funerals all
decorated as if for corroborees. Round their waists, wrists, knees and
ankles had been twigs of Dheal, the sacred tree, and the rest of their
bodies had been painted.
Hippi said a great deal more would have been spoken and sung at the
grave if the dead person had been a man. His spirit would have in a
short sort of prayer been commended to Byamee, who would have been
intreated to let the dead enter Bullimah (heaven), as he had kept the
Boorah laws--that is, of course, if he had been initiated: the spirits
of the uninitiated wander until they are reincarnated, and never enter
Bullimah. One curious coincidence occurred in connection with this
burial.
Seeing the droughty desolation of the country, as we walked to the
grave, I asked old Bootha when she thought it would rain again. Coming
very close to me she half whispered:
'In three days I think it; old woman dead tell me when she dying that
"'sposin" she can send 'em rain, she send 'im three days when her Yowee
bulleerul--spirit breath--go long Oobi Oobi.'
Beemunny died on Wednesday night. On Saturday when we went to bed the
skies were as cloudless as they had been for weeks. In the middle of
the night we were awakened by the patter of rain-drops on the iron
roof. All night it rained, and all the next day.
It is said that a dead person always sends rain within a week of his
death to wash out his tracks on earth.
One little black girl told me she always felt sad when she saw
thunderclouds, because she thought some dead person had sent them.
As a rule, there is a good deal more shedding of blood over a grave
than I saw. This blood offering is said to please the dead, being a
proof to them of the affection of the living. It is funeral etiquette
to prepare yourself with a weapon with which to shed this blood, but
likewise etiquette for a friend to intervene and stop your
self-mutilation.
On emerging from the grave the spirit finds the spirits of his dead
relations waiting to go with him to Oobi Oobi, that is, a sacred
mountain whose top towers into the sky, nearly touching Bullimah. The
new spirit recognises his relations at once; they had, many of them,
been round the death-bed visible at the last to the dying, though not
to any of the watchers with him, though these are said sometimes to
hear the spirit voices.
The spirit from the grave carried with him the twigs of the sacred
Dheal tree which were placed over and under his body; he follows his
spirit relations, dropping these twigs as he goes along, leaving thus a
trail that those who follow may see. At the top of Oobi Oobi he finds
the spirits called Mooroobeaigunnil, whose business it is to bridge
over the distance a spirit has to traverse between the top of the
mountain and Bullimah, the great Byamee's sky-camp.
One of these Mooroobeaigunnil seizes him and hoists him on to his
shoulders; then comes another and hoists the first; and so on, until
the one holding the spirit can lift him into Bullimah. As the spirit is
hoisted in, one of the Mooroobeaigunnil, knocks the lowest one in the
ladder of spirits down; thud to the earth come the rest, making a sound
like a thunderclap, which the far away tribes hear, and hearing say:
'A spirit has entered Bullimah.'
Should a big meteor fall followed by a thunderclap, it is a sign that a
great man has died. Should a number of stars shoot off from a falling
star, it is a sign that a man has died leaving a large family. When a
star is seen falling in the day-time, it is a sign that one of the
Noongahburrah tribe dies.
In the olden time some of the tribes would keep a body at least five
days. Then they would rub the outside black skin off, make an opening
in the side of the body, take out the internal parts, fill it up with
Dheal leaves. They would place the rubbed-off skin and internals in
bark and put it in hollow trees. They would then bury the body, which
they said would come up white.
Sometimes they would keep their dead for weeks, that they might easily
extract the small joint bones with which to make poison.
A baby's body they would sometimes carry for years before burying, but
it would usually have been well smoke-dried first, though not, I
believe, invariably so.
Sometimes a body was kept so that relations from a distance might come
and see for themselves the death was not the result of foul play.
After the body was filled up with Dheal leaves it was put into its bark
coffin and smoke fires made round it.
As each relation arrived he was blindfolded and led up to the corpse,
which was held up standing by some of the men. When the blindfolded
relation came near, the bandage was taken off him and before him he saw
standing his relation, whom he examined to see if wounds were visible.
If signs of violence were apparent, the murderer had to be discovered
and stand his trial. He was given a shield to defend himself with.
Every man had a right to throw a weapon at him; should he manage to
defend himself successfully, as far as that crime was concerned he
would be henceforth a free man, no stigma attaching to him whatever. In
which, I fancy, the blacks show themselves a larger-minded people than
their white supplanters, who make this world no place for repentance
for wrong-doers, 'though they seek it with tears.' In the world's
opinion there is no limit to a man's sentence. We read the letter of
the Gospel, and leave the spirit of it to the blacks to apply.
Should there be a difficulty as to discovering the criminal, all the
men of the tribes amongst whom the murderer could be stand round the
coffin. A head man says to the corpse, 'Did such and such a man harm
you?' naming, one after another, all the men. At the guilty one's name
the corpse is said to knock a sort of rap, rap, rap.
That man has to stand his trial.
But as a rule the blacks like to bury their dead quickly, because the
spirit haunts their neighbourhood or its late camp until the body is
buried. Mysterious lights are said to be seen at night, and there is a
general scare in camp-land until a corpse is safely buried.
There are variations in the funeral rites of nearly every tribe. Even
in our district the dead were sometimes placed in hollow trees. I know
of skeletons in trees on the edge of the ridge on which the home
station was built. These are said to be for the most part the bodies of
worthless women or babies.
In the coastal districts there are platforms in trees on which dead
bodies were laid. In some places corpses are tied up in a sitting
posture. The tying, they say, is to keep them secure when spirits come
about, or body-snatchers for poison bones.
In some places the graves are covered with a sort of emu egg-shaped and
sized lumps of copi; and also, when a widow's term of mourning was
over, she would take the widow's cap--which was a sort of copi or gypsum
covering put on wet to her head--and place it on the grave of her
husband.
On the Narran the widows plaster their heads with copi or bidyi, as
they call it, but so thinly that it cakes off. They renew it, and keep
their heads covered with it for the allotted term of mourning, then
just let it gradually all wear off.
Those widows' caps, having the imprint of nets inside them, are very
old; for hair nets have been out of fashion for very many years in
camp-land, so such rank as antique curios.
I don't think the small girl who thought when she grew up she'd choose
to be a widow, would have thought so if she had been born black.
When a black woman's husband dies she has to cover herself with mud,
and sleep beside a smouldering smoke all night. Three days afterwards,
black fellows go and make a fire by the creek. They chase the widow and
her sisters, who might have been her husband's wives, down to the
creek. The widow catches hold of the smoking bush, puts it under her
arm, and jumps into the middle of the creek; as the smoking bush is
going out she drinks some of the smoky water. Then out she comes, is
smoked at the fire; she then calls to those in the camp, and looks
towards her husband's grave and calls again; his spirit answers, and
the blacks call to her that they have heard him.
After that she is allowed to speak; she had been doomed to silence
since his death, but for lamentations. She goes to the new camp, where
another big smoke is made. She puts on her widow's cap, which, as it
wears out, has to be renewed for many months; for some months, too, she
keeps her face daubed with white.
Every time a stranger comes to the camp the widow has to make a smoke
and smoke the camp again. The nearest of kin to her husband has a right
to claim her as wife when her mourning is over.
Should a woman be left a widow two or three times there are sinister
whisperings about her. She is spoken of as having a 'white heart'; and
no man can live long, they say, with a woman having a 'white heart.'
The graves in some parts of Australia are marked by carved trees; only
a few painted upright posts marked them on the Narran.
A tabooed camp has always a marked tree--just a piece of bark cut off
and some red markings made on the wood, which indicate that the place
is gummarl.
Any possessions of the dead not buried with them are burnt, except the
sacred stones; they are left to the wirreenun nearest of kin to the
dead person.
Lately a case came under my notice of the taboo extended to the
possessions of dead people.
A black man having two horses died. Neither his widow nor her mother
would use those horses, even when he had been dead over a year. They
would walk ten or twelve miles for their rations and carry them back,
rather than use those horses before the term of mourning was over.
The widow was one of my particular friends, but she would not come to
see me because her husband had been at the house shortly before he
died. She camped nearly a mile away, and I went to see her there. After
he had been dead about a year, she came to see me; but before she did
so her mother walked all round the out-buildings, garden, yards, etc.,
with a bunch of smoking Budtha, crooning little spirit songs.