SOMETHING ABOUT STARS AND LEGENDS
Venus in the Summer evenings is a striking object in the western sky.
Our Venus they call the Laughing Star, who is a man. He once said
something very improper, and has been laughing at his joke ever since.
As he scintillates you seem to see him grinning still at his
Rabelais-like witticism, seeing which the {aborigines} say:
'He's a rude old man, that Laughing Star.'
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.
There is one old man up there who was once a great rainmaker, and when
you see that he has turned round as the position of the Milky Way is
altered, you may expect rain; he never moves except to make it.
A waving dark shadow that you will see along the same course is
Kurreah, the crocodile.
To get to the Warrambool, the Wurrawilberoo, two dark spots in Scorpio,
have to be passed. They are devils who try to catch the spirits of the
dead; sometimes even coming to earth, when they animate whirlwinds and
strike terror into the blacks. The old men try to keep them from racing
through the camp by throwing their spears and boomerangs at them.
The Pleiades are seven sisters, as usual, the dimmed ones having been
dulled because on earth Wurrunnah seized them and tried to melt the
crystal off them at a fire; for, beautiful as they were with their long
hair, they were ice-maidens. But he was unsuccessful beyond dulling
their brightness, for the ice as it melted put out the fire. The two
ice-maidens were miserable on earth with him, and eventually escaped by
the aid of one of their 'multiplex totems,' the pine-tree. Wurrunnah
had told them to get him pine bark. Now the Meamei--Pleiades--belong to
the Beewee totem, so does the pine-tree. They chopped the pine bark,
and as they did so the tree telescoped itself to the sky where the
five other Meamei were, whom they now joined, and with whom they have
remained ever since. But they who were polluted by their enforced
residence with the earth-man never shone again with the brightness of
their sisters. This legend was told emphasising the beauty of chastity.
Men had desired all the sisters when once they travelled on earth, but
they kept themselves unspotted from the world, with the exception of
the two Wurrunnah captured by stratagem.
Orion's Sword and Belt are the Berai-Berai--the boys--who best of all
loved the Meamei, for whom they used to hunt, bringing their offerings
to them; but the ice-maidens were obdurate and cold, disdaining lovers,
as might be expected from their parentage. Their father was a rocky
mountain, their mother an icy mountain stream. But when they were
translated to the sky the Berai-Berai were inconsolable. They would not
hunt, they would not eat, they pined away and died. The spirits pitied
them and placed them in the sky within sound of the singing of the
Meamei, and there they are happy. By day they hunt, and at night light
their corroboree fires, and dance to the singing in the distance. Just
to remind the earth-people of them, the Meamei drop down some ice in
the winter, and they it is who make the winter thunderstorms.
Castor and Pollux, in some tribes, are two hunters of long ago.
Canopus is Womba, the Mad Star, the wonderful Weedah of long ago, who,
on losing his loves, went mad, and was sent to the sky that they might
not reach him; but they followed, and are travelling after him to this
day, and after them the wizard Beereeun, their evil genius, who made
the mirage on the plains in order to deceive them, that they and Weedah
might be lured on by it and perish of thirst.
When they escaped him Beereeun threw a barbed spear into the sky, and
hooked one spear on to another until he made a ladder up which he
climbed after them; and across the sky he is still pursuing them.
The Clouds of Magellan are the Bralgah, or Native Companions, mother
and daughter, whom the Wurrawilberoo chased in order to kill and eat
the mother and keep the daughter, who was the great dancer of the
tribes. They almost caught her, but her tribe pursued them too quickly;
when, determined that if they lost her so should her people, they
chanted an incantation and changed her from Bralgah, the dancing-girl,
to Bralgah, the dancing-bird, then left her to wander about the plains.
They translated themselves on beefwood trees into the sky, and there
they are still.
Gowargay, the featherless emu, is a debbil-debbil of water-holes; he
drags people who bathe in his holes down and drowns them, but goes
every night to his sky-camp, the Coalpit, a dark place by the Southern
Cross, and there he crouches. Our Corvus, the crow, is the kangaroo.
The Southern Crown is Mullyan, the eagle-hawk. The Southern Cross was
the first Minggah, or spirit tree a huge Yaraan, which was the medium
for the translation of the first man who died on earth to the sky. The
white cockatoos which used to roost in this tree when they saw it
moving skywards followed it, and are following it still as Mouyi, the
pointers. The other Yaraan trees wailed for the sadness that death
brought into the world, weeping tears of blood. The red gum which
crystallises down their trunks is the tears.
Some tribes say it was by a woman's fault that death came into the
world.
This legend avers that at first the tribes were meant to live for ever.
The women were told never to go near a certain hollow tree. The bees
made a nest in this tree; the women coveted the honey, but the men
forbade them to go near it. But at last one woman determined to get
that honey; chop went her tomahawk into that hollow trunk, and out flew
a huge bat. This was the spirit of death which was now let free to roam
the world, claiming all it could touch with its wings.
Of eclipses there are various accounts. Some say it is Yhi, the sun,
the wanton woman, who has overtaken at last her enemy the moon, who
scorned her love, and whom now she tries to kill, but the spirits
intervene, dreading a return to a dark world. Some say the enemies have
managed to get evil spirits into each other which are destroying them.
The wirreenuns chant incantations to oust these spirits of evil, and
when the eclipse is over claim a triumph of their magic.
Another account says that Yhi, the sun, after many lovers, tried to
ensnare Bahloo, the moon; but he would have none of her, and so she
chases him across the sky, telling the spirits who stand round the sky
holding it up, that if they let him escape past them to earth, she will
throw down the spirit who sits in the sky holding the ends of the
Kurrajong ropes which they guard at the other end, and if that spirit
falls the earth will be hurled down into everlasting darkness.
So poor Bahloo, when he wants to get to earth and go on with the
creation of baby girls, has to sneak down as an emu past the spirits,
hurrying off as soon as the sun sinks down too.
Bahloo is a very important personage in legends.
When the blacks see a halo round the moon they say,
'Hullo! Going to be rain. Bahloo building a house to keep himself dry.'
All sorts of scraps of folk-lore used to crop out from the little girls
I took from the camp into the house to domesticate. When storms were
threatening, some of the clouds have a netted sort of look, something
like a mackerel sky, only with a dusky green tinge, they would say:
'See the old man with the net on his back; he's going to drop some
hailstones.'
Meteors always mean death; should a trail follow them, the dead person
has left a large family.
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. Besides there are many mythical bogies still at
large, according to native lore, making the bush a gnome-land.
Even the winds carry a legend in their breath.
You hear people say they could have 'burst with rage,' but it is left
to a black's legend to tell of a whole tribe bursting with rage, and so
originating the winds.
There was once an invisible tribe called Mayrah. These people, men and
women, though they talked and hunted with them, could never be seen by
the other tribes, to whom were only visible their accoutrements for
hunting. They would hear a woman's voice speak to them, see perhaps a
goolay in mid-air and hear from it an invisible baby's cry; they would
know then a Mayrah woman was there. Or a man would speak to them.
Looking up they would see a belt with weapons in it, a forehead band
too, perhaps, but no waist nor forehead, a water-vessel invisibly held:
a man was there, an invisible Mayrah. One of these Mayrah men chummed
with one of the Doolungaiyah tribe; he was a splendid mate, a great
hunter, and all that was desirable, but for his invisibility. The
Doolungaiyah longed to see him, and began to worry him on the subject
until at last the Mayrah became enraged, went to his tribe, and told
them of the curiosity of the other tribes as to their bodily forms. The
others became as furious as he was; they all burst with rage and rushed
away roaring in six different directions, and ever since have only
returned as formless wind to be heard but never seen. So savagely the
Mayrah howled round the Doolungaiyah's camp that he burrowed into the
sand to escape, and his tribe have burrowed ever since.
Three of the winds are masculine and three feminine. The Crow,
according to legend, controls Gheeger Gheeger, and keeps her in a
hollow log. The Eagle-hawk owns Gooroongoodilbaydilbay, and flies with
her in the shape of high clouds. Yarragerh is a man, and he has for
wives the Budtha, Bibbil, and Bumble trees, and when he breathes on
them they burst into new shoots, buds, flowers, and fruits, telling the
world that their lover Yarragerh, the spring, has come.
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. In some of the blacks' songs Mayrah is sung of as
the mother of Yarragerh, the spring, or as a woman kissed into life by
Yarragerh putting such warmth into her that she blows the winter away.
But these are poetical licences, for Yarragerh is ordinarily a man who
woos the trees as a spring wind until the flowers are born and the
fruit formed, then back he goes to the heaven whence he came.
Then there are the historical landmarks: Byamee's tracks in stone, and
so on, and the battle-fields, too, of old tribal fights. Just in front
of our station store was a gnarled old Coolabah tree covered with warty
excrescences, which are supposed to be seats for spirits, so showing a
spirit haunt.
In this particular tree are the spirits of the Moungun, or armless
women, and when the wind blows you could hear them wailing. Their cruel
husband chopped their arms off because they could not get him the honey
he wanted, and their spirits have wailed ever since.
Across the creek is another very old tree, having one hollow part in
which is said to be secreted a shell which old Wurrunnah, the traveller
of the tribes, and the first to see the sea, brought back. No one would
dare to touch the shell. The tribe of a neighbouring creek, when we
were first at the station, used to threaten to come and get it, but the
men of the local tribe used to muster to protect it from desecration
even at the expense of their lives.
The Minggah by the garden I have told you of before. Further down the
creek are others.
At Weetalibah was the tree from which Byamee cut the first Gayandi.
This tree was burnt by travellers a few years ago. The blacks were
furious: the sacred tree of Byamee burnt by the white devils! There are
trees, too, considered sacred, from which Byamee cut honey and marked
them for his own, just as a man even now, on finding a bee's nest and
not being able to stay and get it, marks a tree, which for any one else
to touch is theft.
A little way from the head station was an outcrop of white stones.
These are said to be fossilised bones of Boogoodoogahdah's victims. She
was a cannibal woman who had hundreds of dogs; with them she used to
round up blacks and kill them, and she and her dogs ate them. At last
she was outwitted and killed herself, and her spirit flew out as a bird
from her heart. This bird haunts burial grounds, and if in a drought
any one can run it down and make it cry out, rain will fall.
During a drought one of these birds came into my garden, hearing which
the blacks said rain would come soon, and it did. In another drought
when the rainmakers had failed, some of the old blacks saw a rain-bird
and hunted it, but could not get it to call out.
Geologists say there should be diamonds along some of the old
water-courses of the Moorilla ridges. Perhaps the white stone that the
blacks talk about, which shows a light at night, and has, they say, a
devil in it, is a diamond. Ruskin rather thought there was a devil in
diamonds, making women do all sorts of evil to possess them. The blacks
told me that a Queensland tribe had a marvellous stone which at great
gatherings they show. Taking those who are privileged to see it into
the dark, there they suddenly produce it, and it glows like a star,
though when looked closely at in daylight seems only like a large drop
of rain solidified. This stone, they said, has to be well guarded, as
it has the power of self-movement, or rather, the devil in it can move
it.
The greatest of local landmarks is at Brewarrina; this is the work of
Byamee and his giant sons, the stone fisheries made in the bed of the
Barwon.
At Boogira, on the Narran Lake, is an imprint in stone of Byamee's hand
and foot, which shows that in those days were giants. There it was that
Byamee brought to bay the crocodiles who had swallowed his wives, from
which he recovered them and restored them to life.
At Mildool is a scooped-out rock which Byamee made to catch and hold
water; beside it he hollowed out a smaller stone, that his dog might
have a drinking-place too. This recurrence of the mention of dogs in
the legends touching Byamee looks as if blacks at all events believed
dogs to have been in Australia as long as men.
At Dooyanweenia are two rocks where Byamee and Birrahgnooloo rested,
and to these rocks are still sticking the hairs he pulled from his
beard, after rubbing his face with gum to make them come out easily.
At Guddee, a spring in the Brewarrina district, every now and then come
up huge bones of animals now extinct. Legends say that these bones are
the remains of the victims of Mullyan, the eagle-hawk, whose camp was
in the tree at the foot of which was the spring. This tree was a tree
of trees; first, a widely spreading gum, then another kind, next a
pine, and lastly a midgee, in which was Mullyan's camp, out of which
the relations of his victims burnt him and his wives, and they now form
the Northern Crown constellation. The roots of this gigantic tree
travelled for miles, forming underground water-courses. At Eurahbah and
elsewhere are hollowed-out caves like stones; in these places
Birrahgnooloo slept, and near them, before the stock trampled them out,
were always to be found springs made at her instigation for her
refreshment; she is the patroness of water.
At Toulby and elsewhere are mud springs. It is said that long ago there
were no springs there, nor in the Warrego district, and in the droughts
the water-courses all dried up and the blacks perished in hundreds.
Time, after time this happened, until at last it seemed as if the
tribes would be exterminated. The Yanta--spirits--saw what was
happening and felt grieved, so they determined to come and live on the
earth again to try and bring relief to the drought-stricken people.
Down they came and set to work to excavate springs. They scooped out
earth and dug, deeper and deeper, until at length after many of them
gave in from exhaustion, those that were left were rewarded by seeing
springs bubble up.
The first of those that they made was at Yantabulla, which bears their
name to this day.
The blacks were delighted at having watering-places which neither a
drought nor the fiercest sun could dry up. The Yantas were not
contented with this nor with the other springs they made. They
determined to excavate a whole plain, and turn it into a lake so deep
that the sun could never dry it, and which would be full of fish for
the tribes.
They went to Kinggle and there began their work. On they toiled
unceasingly, but work as they would they could not complete their
scheme, for one after another wearied and died, until at last nothing
was left on the plain but the mud springs under the surface and the
graves of the Yantas on top. No blacks will cross Kinggle plains lest
some of these spirits arise through the openings of their graves.
This legend shows what a disheartening country the West is in a
drought. When even the spirits gave in, how can ordinary men succeed?
But indeed it is not ordinary men who do, but our 'Western heroes,' as
Will Ogilvie calls them, who wear their cross of bronze on neck and
cheek in the country where 'the green fades into grey.'