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CHAPTER III
RELATIONSHIPS AND TOTEMS

Some savants question the intellectual ability of the blacks because they have not elaborate systems of numeration and notation, which in their life were quite unneeded. Such as were needed were supplied. They are often incorporate in one word-noun and qualifying numerical adjective, as for example —

Gundooee A SOLITARY EMU

Booloowah TWO EMUS

Oogle oogle FOUR EMUS

Gayyahnai FIVE OR SIX EMUS

Gonurrun FOURTEEN OR FIFTEEN EMUS.

I fancy the brains that could have elaborated their marriage rules were capable of workaday arithmetic if necessary, and few indeed of us know our family trees as the blacks know theirs.

Even the smallest black child who can talk seems full of knowledge as to all his relations, animate and inanimate, the marriage taboos, and the rest of their complicated system.

The first division among this tribe is a blood distinction (I phratries'): —

Gwaigulleeah LIGHT BLOODED

Gwaimudthen DARK BLOODED.

This distinction is not confined to the human beings of the tribe, who must be of one or the other, but there are the Gwaigulleeah and Gwaimudthen divisions in all things. The first and chief division in our tribe, as regards customary marriage law, is the partition of all tribes-folk into these 'phratries,' or 'exogamous moieties.' While in most Australian tribes the meanings of the names of phratries are lost, where the meanings are known they are usually names of animals – Eagle, Hawk, and Crow, White Cockatoo and Black Cockatoo, and so forth. Among the great Kamilaroi tribe, akin in speech to the Euahlayi, the names of phratries, DILBI and KUPATHIN, are of unknown significance. The Euahlayi names, we have seen, are Gwaigulleeah, Light blooded, and Gwaimudthen, Dark blooded.

The origin of this division is said to be the fact that the original ancestors were, on the one side, a red race coming from the west, the Gwaigulleeah; on the other, a dark race coming from the east.

A Gwaigulleeah may under no circumstances marry a Gwaigulleeah; he or she must mate with a Gwaimudthen. This rule has no exception. A child belongs to the same phratry as its mother.

The next name of connection is local, based on belonging to one country or hunting-ground; this name a child takes from its mother wherever it may happen to be born. Any one who is called a Noongahburrah belongs to the Noongah-Kurrajong country; Ghurreeburrah to the orchid country; Mirriehburrah, poligonum country; Bibbilah, Bibbil country, and so on. This division, not of blood relationship, carries no independent marriage restriction, but keeps up a feeling equivalent to Scotch, Irish, or English, and is counted by the blacks as 'relationship,' but not sufficiently so to bar marriage.

The next division is the name in common for all daughters, or all sons of one family of sisters. The daughters take the name from their maternal grandmother, the sons from their maternal great-uncle.

Of these divisions, called I Matrimonial Classes, there are four for each sex, bearing the same names as among the Kamilaroi. The names are —

Masculine Kumbo BROTHER AND SISTER

Feminine, Bootha

Masculine Murree BROTHER AND SISTER

Feminine, Matha

Masculine Hippi BROTHER AND SISTER

Feminine, Hippitha

Masculine Kubbee BROTHER AND SISTER

Feminine, Kubbootha

The children of Bootha will be

Masculine Hippi BROTHER AND SISTER

Feminine, Hippitha

The children of Matha will be

Masculine Kubbee BROTHER AND SISTER

Feminine, Kubbootha

The children of Hippatha will be

Masculine Kumbo BROTHER AND SISTER

Feminine, Bootha

The children of Kubbootha will be

Masculine Murree BROTHER AND SISTER

Feminine, Matha

Thus, you see, they take, if girls, their grandmother's and her sisters' 'class' names in common; if boys, the 'class' name of their grandmother's brothers.

Bootha can only marry Murree,

Matha can only marry Kumbo,

Hippitha can only marry Kubbee,

Kubbootha can only marry Hippi.

Both men and women are often addressed by these names when spoken to.

A PROPOS of names, a child is never called at night by the same name as in the daytime, lest the 'devils' hear it and entice him away.

Names are made for the newly born according to circumstances; a girl born under a Dheal tree, for example, was called Dheala. Any incident happening at the time of birth may gain a child a name, such as a particular lizard passing. Two of my black maids were called after lizards in that way: Barahgurree and Bogginbinnia.

Nimmaylee is a porcupine with the spines coming; such an one having been brought to the camp just as a girl was born, she became Nimmaylee.

The mothers, with native politeness, ask you to give their children English names, but much mote often use in familiar conversation either the Kumbo Bootha names, or others derived from place of birth, from some circumstance connected with it, a child's mispronunciation of a word, some peculiarity noticed in the child, or still more often they call each other by the name proclaiming the degree of relationship.

For example, a girl calls the daughters of her mother and of her aunts alike sisters.

So relationships are always kept in their memories by being daily used as names. There are other general names, too, such as —

Another list of names used ordinarily is —

Those of the same totem are reckoned as brothers and sisters, so cannot intermarry. 'Boyjerh' relations, as those on the father's side are called, are not so important as on the mother's side, but are still recognised.

Now for the great Dhe, or totem system, by some called Mah, but Dhe, is the more correct.

Dinewan, or emu, is a totem, and has amongst its multiplex totems' or 'sub-totems' —

Bohrah, the kangaroo, is another totem, and is considered somewhat akin to Dinewan. For example, in a quarrel between, say, the Bohrah totem and the Beewee, the Dinewan would take the part of the former rather than the latter.

Amongst the multiplex totems of Bohrah are —

All clouds, lightning, thunder, and rain that is not blown up by the wind of another totem, belong to Bohrah.

Beewee, brown and yellow Iguana, numerically a very powerful totem, has for multiplex totems —

Those with whom the Beewee shares the winds he counts as relations. It is the Beewees of the Gwaimudthen, or dark blood, who own Yarragerh (spring wind); the light-blooded own Mudderwurderh (west wind).

Another totem is Gouyou, or Bandicoot. The animal has disappeared from the Narran district, but the totem tribe is still strong, though not so numerous as either the Beewees or Dinewans.

Multiplex totems of Gouyou —

Next we take Doolungaiyah, or Bilber, commonly known as Bilby, a large species of rat the size of a small rabbit, like which it burrows; almost died out now. The totem clan are very few here too, so it is difficult to learn much as to their multiplex totems, amongst which, however, are —

Douyou, black snake, totem claims —

Moodai, or opossum, another totem, claims —

Maira, a paddy melon, claims as multiplex totems —

It is said a Maira will never be drowned, for the rivers are a sub-totem of theirs; but I notice they nevertheless learn to swim.

Yubbah, carpet snake, as a kin has almost disappeared, only a few members remaining to claim

Burrahwahn, a big sandhill rat, now extinct here, claims —

Buckandee, native cat kin, claim —

Amongst other totems were once the Bralgah, Native Companion, and Dibbee, a sort of sandpiper, but their kins are quite extinct as far as our blacks are concerned; the birds themselves are still plentiful. 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.

The totem kins numerically strongest with us were the Dinewans, Beewees, Bohrahs, and Gouyous. Further back in the country, they tell me, the crow, the eaglehawk, and the bees were original totems, not multiplex ones, as with us.

It may be as well for those interested in the marriage law puzzles to state that Dinewans, Bohrahs, Douyous, and Doolungayers are always

That Moodai, Gouyou, Beewee, Maira, Yubbah are always

Our blacks may and do eat their hereditary totems, if so desirous, with no ill effects to themselves, either real or imaginary; their totem names they take from their mothers. They may, in fact, in any way use their totems, but never abuse them. A Beewee, for example, may kill, or see another kill, and eat or use a Beewee, or one of its multiplex totems, and show no sign of sorrow or anger, but should any one speak evil of the Beewee, or of any of its multiplex totems, there will be a quarrel.

There will likewise be a quarrel if any one dares to mimic a totem, either by drawing one, except at Boorahs, or imitating it in any way.

There are members of the tribes, principally wizards, or men intended to be such, who are given an individual totem called Yunbeai. This they must never eat or they will die. Any injury to his yunbeai hurts the man himself In danger he has the power to assume the shape of his yunbeai, which of course is a great assistance to him, especially in legendary lore; but, on the other hand, a yunbeai is almost a Heel of Achilles to a wirreenun (see the chapter on Medicine and Magic).

Women are given a yunbeai too, sometimes. One girl had a yunbeai given her as a child, and she was to be brought up as a witch, but she caught rheumatic fever which left her with St. Vitus's dance. The yunbeai during one of her bad attacks jumped out of her, and she lost her chance of witchery. One old fellow told me once that when he was going to a public-house he took a miniature form of his yunbeai, which was the Kurrea – crocodile – out of himself and put it safety in a bottle of water, in case by any chance he got drunk, and an enemy, knowing his yunbeai, coaxed it away. I wanted to see that yunbeai in a bottle, but never succeeded.

The differences between the hereditary totem or Dhe, inherited from the mother, and the individual totem or yunbeai, acquired by chance, are these: Food restrictions do not affect the totem, but marriage restrictions do; the yunbeai has no marriage restrictions; a man having an opossum for yunbeai may marry a woman having the same either as her yunbeai or hereditary totem, other things being in order, but under no circumstances must a yunbeai be eaten by its possessor.

The yunbeai is a sort of alter ego; a man's spirit is in his yunbeai, and his yunbeai's spirit in him.

A Minggah, or spirit-haunted tree of an individual, usually chosen from amongst a man's multiplex totems, is another source of danger to him, as also a help.

As Mr. Canton says: 'What singular threads of superstition bind the ends of the earth together! In an old German story a pair of lovers about to part chose each a tree, and by the tree of the absent one was the one left to know of his wellbeing or the reverse. In time his tree died, and she, hearing no news of him, pined away, her tree withering with her, and both dying at the same time.

Well, that is just what a wirreenun would believe about his Minggah. These Minggah and Goomarh spirit trees and stones always make me think, perhaps irrelevantly, of one of the restored sayings of the Lord, which ends 'Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me; cleave the wood, and I am there.'

Blacks were early scientists in some of their ideas, being before Darwin with the evolution theory, only theirs was a kind of evolution aided by Byamee. I dare say, though, the missing link is somewhere in the legends. I rather think the Central Australians have the key to it. One old man here was quite an Ibsen with his ghastly version of heredity.

He said, when I asked him what harm it would do for, say, a Beewee totem man to come from the Gulf country, where his tribe had never had any communication with ours, and marry a girl here, – that all Beewees were originally changed from the Beewee form into human shape. The Beewee of the Gulf, originally, like the Beewee here, had the same animal shape, and should two of this same blood mate the offspring would throw back, as they say of horses, to the original strain, and partake of iguana (Beewee) attributes either in nature or form.

From the statements just given, it will be seen that the Euahlayi are in the Kamilaroi stage of social organisation. They reckon descent in the female line: they have 'phratries' and four matrimonial classes, with totems within the phratries. In their system of 'multiplex-totems' or 'sub-totems' they resemble the Wotjobaluk tribe. [Howitt, NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA, pp. 121, 125, 453, 455.] The essence of the 'sub-totem' system is the division of all things into the categories provided by the social system of the human society. The arrangement is a very early attempt at a scientific system of classification.

Perhaps the most peculiar feature in the organisation of the Euahlayi is the existence of Matrimonial Classes, which are named as in the Kamilaroi tongue, while the phratry names are not those of the Kamilaroi, and alone among phratry names in Australia which can be translated, are not names of animals. The phratries have thus no presiding animals, and in the phratries there are no totem kins of the phratriac names. The cause of these peculiarities is matter of conjecture.

A peculiarity in the totemic system of the Euahlayi – the right of each individual to kill and eat his own totem – has been mentioned, and may be associated here with other taboos on food.

The wunnarl, or food taboo, was taken off a different kind of food for boys at each Boorah, until at last they could eat what they pleased except their yunbeai, or individual familiar: their Dhe, or family totem, was never wunnarl or taboo to them.

A child may not perhaps know that it has had a yunbeai given to it, and may eat of it in ignorance, when immediately they say that child sickens.

Should a boy or a girl eat plains turkey or bustard eggs while they were yet wunnarl, or taboo, he or she would lose his or her sight. Should they eat the eggs or flesh of kangaroo or piggiebillah, their skins would break out in sores and their limbs wither.

Even honey is wunnarl at times to all but the very old or very young. Fish is wunnarl for about four years after his Boorah to a boy, and about four months after she is wirreebeeun, or young woman, to a girl.

When the wunnarl was taken off a particular kind of meat, a wizard poured some of the melted fat and inside blood of that animal or bird, as the case might be, over the boy, and rubbed it into him. The boy, shaking and shivering, made a spluttering noise with his lips; after that he could eat of the hitherto forbidden food.

This did not necessarily refer to his totem, but any food wunnarl to him, though it is possible that there may have been a time in tribal history, now forgotten, when totems were wunnarl, and these ceremonies may be all that is left to point to that time.

When a boy, after his first Boorah, killed his first emu, whether it was his Dhe, or totem, or not, his father made him lie on the bird before it was cooked. Afterwards a wirreenun (wizard) and the father rubbed the fat on the boy's joints, and put apiece of the flesh in his mouth. 'The boy chewed it, making a noise as he did so of fright and disgust; finally he dropped the meat from his mouth, making a blowing noise through his lips of 'Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!' After that he could eat the flesh.

A girl, too, had to be rubbed with the fat and blood of anything from which the wunnarl was to be removed for her. No ceremony of this sort would be gone through with the flesh, fat, or blood of any one's yunbeai, or individual familiar animal, for under no circumstances would any one kill or eat their yunbeai.

Concerning the yunbeai, or animal familiar of the individual, conferred by the medicine men, more is to be said in the ensuing chapters. The yunbeai answers to the Manitu obtained by Red Indians during the fast at puberty; to the 'Bush Soul' of West Africa; to the Nagual of South American tribes; and to the Nyarong of Borneo. The yunbeai has hitherto been scarcely remarked on among Australian tribes. Mr. Thomas declares it to be 'almost non-existent' in Australia, mentioning as exceptions its presence among the Euahlayi; the Wotjobaluk in Victoria; the Yaraikkanna of Cape York; and 'probably' some of the northern tribes on the other side of the Gulf of Carpentaria. [MAN (1904), No. 53, p. 85.]

Perhaps attention has not been directed to the animal familiar in Australia, or perhaps it is really an infrequent thing among the tribes.

CHAPTER IV
THE MEDICINE MEN

I used to wonder how the wirreenuns or doctor-wizards of the tribe attained their degrees.

I found out that the old wizards fix upon a young boy who is to follow their profession. They take him to a tribal burial-ground at night. There they tie him down and leave him, after having lit some fires of fat at short distances round him.

During the night that boy, if he be shaky in his nerves, has rather a bad time.

One doctor of our tribe gave me a recital of his own early experience.

He said, after the old fellows had gone, a spirit came to him, and without undoing his fastenings by which he was bound, turned him over, then went away. Scarcely had the spirit departed when a big star fell straight from the sky alongside the boy; he gazed fixedly at it, and saw emerge from it, first the two hind legs, then the whole of a Beewee or iguana. The boy's totem was a Beewee, so he knew it would not hurt him. It ran close up to him, climbed on him, ran down his whole length, then went away.

Next came a snake straight towards his nose, hissing all the time. He was frightened now, for the snake is the hereditary enemy of the iguana. The boy struggled to free himself, but ineffectually. He tried to call out but found himself dumb. He tried to shut his eyes, or turn them from the snake, but was powerless to do so. The snake crawled on to him and licked him. Then it went away, leaving the boy as one paralysed. Next came a huge figure to him, having in its hand a gunnai or yam stick. The figure drove this into the boy's head, pulled it out through his back, and in the hole thus made placed a 'Gubberah,' or sacred stone, with the help of which much of the boy's magic in the future was to be worked.

This stone was about the size and something the shape of a small lemon, looking like a smoothed lump of semi-transparent crystal. It is in such stones that the wi-wirreenuns, or cleverest wizards, see visions of the past, of what is happening in the present at a distance, and of the future; also by directing rays from them towards their victims they are said to cause instantaneous death.

Next, to the doctor-boy on trial, came the spirits of the dead who corroboreed round him, chanting songs full of sacred lore as regards the art of healing, and instructions how, when he needed it, he could call upon their aid.

Then they silently and mysteriously disappeared. The next day one of the old wizards came to release the boy; he kept him away from the camp all day and at night took him to a weedah, or bower-bird's, playground. There he tied him down again, and there the boy was visited again by the spirits of the dead, and more lore was imparted to him.

The reason given for taking him to a weedah's playground is, that before the weedah was changed into a bird, he was a great wirreenun; that is why, as a bird, he makes such a collection of pebbles and bones at his playground.

The bower-bird's playgrounds are numerous in the bush. They are made of grass built into a tent-shaped arch open at each end, through which the weedahs run in and out, and scattered in heaps all around are white bones and black stones, bits of glass, and sometimes we have found coins, rings, and brooches.

The weedahs do not lay their eggs at their playgrounds their nests are hard to find. A little boy always known as 'Weedah,' died lately, so probably a new name will have to be found for the bird, or to mention it will be taboo, at all events before the old people, who never allow the names of the dead to be mentioned.

For several nights the medical student was tied down in case he should be frightened and run away, after that he was left without bonds. He was kept away from the camp for about two months. But he was not allowed to become a practitioner until he was some years older: first he dealt in conjuring, later on he was permitted to show his knowledge of pharmacy.

His conjuring cures are divers.

A burn he cures by sucking lumps of charcoal from it. Obstinate pains in the chest, the wizard says, must be caused by some enemy having put a dead person's hair', or bone in it. Looking wisdom personified in truly professional manner, he sucks at the affected spot, and soon produces from his mouth hair, bones, or whatever he said was there.

If this faith-healing does not succeed, a stronger wizard than he must have bewitched the patient; he will consult the spirits. To that end he goes to his Minggah, a tree or stone – more often a tree, only the very greatest wirreenuns have stones, which are called Goomah – where his own and any spirits friendly towards him may dwell.

He finds out there who the enemy is, and whence he obtained his poison. If a wirreenun is too far away to consult his friendly spirits in person, he can send his Mullee Mullee, or dream spirit, to interview them.

He may learn that an enemy has captured the sick person's Doowee, or dream spirit – only wirreenuns' dream spirits are Mullee Mullee, the others are Doowee – then he makes it his business to get that Doowee back.

These dream spirits are rather troublesome possessions while their human habitations sleep they can leave them and wander at will. The things seen in dreams are supposed to be what the Doowees see while away from the sleeping bodies. This wandering of the Doowees is a great chance for their enemies: capture the Doowee and the body sickens; knock the Doowee about before it returns and the body wakes up tired and languid. Should the Doowee not return at all, the person from whom it wandered dies. When you wake up unaccountably tired in the morning, be sure your Doowee has been 'on the spree,' having a free fight or something of that sort. And though your Doowee may give you at times lovely visions of passing paradises, on the whole you would be better without him.

There is on the Queensland border country a dillee bag full of unclaimed Doowees. The wirreenun who has charge of this is one of the most feared of wirreenuns; he is a great magician, who, with his wonder-working glassy stones, can conjure up visions of the old fleshly habitations of the captured Doowees.

He has Gubberahs, or clever stones, in which are the active spirits of evil-working devils, as well as others to work good. Should a Doowee once get into this wirreenun's bag, which has the power of self-movement, there is not a great chance of getting it back, though it is sometimes said to be done by a rival combination of magic. The worst of it is that ordinary people have no power over their Doowees; all they can do is to guard against their escaping by trying to keep their mouths shut while asleep.

The wirreenuns are masters of their Mullee Mullees, sending them where they please, to do what they are ordered, always provided they do not meet a greater than themselves.

All sorts of complications arise through the substitution of mad or evil spirits for the rightful Doowee. Be sure if you think any one has suddenly changed his character unaccountably, there has been some hankey-pankey with that person's Doowee. One of the greatest warnings of coming evil is to see your totem in a dream; such a sign is a herald of misfortune to you or one of your immediate kin. Should a wirreenun, perhaps for enmity, perhaps for the sake of ransom, decide to capture a Doowee, he will send his Mullee Mullee out to do it, bidding the Mullee Mullee secrete the Doowee in his – the wirreenun's – Minggah, tree or rock.

When he is consulted as to the return of the missing Doowee, he will order the one who has lost it to Sleep, then the Doowee, should the terms made suit the wirreenun, re-enters the body. Should it not do so, the Doowee-less one is doomed to die.

In a wirreenun's Minggah, too, are often secreted shadow spirits stolen from their owners, who are by their loss dying a lingering death, for no man can live without Mulloowil, his shadow. Every one has a shadow spirit which he is very careful not to parade before his enemies, as any injury to it affects himself. A wirreenun can gradually shrink the shadow's size, the owner sickens and dies. 'May your shadow never be less!'

The shadow of a wirreenun is, like his head, always mahgarl, or taboo; any one touching either will be made to suffer for such sacrilege.

A man's Minggah is generally a tree from amongst his multiplex totems,' as having greater reason to help him, being of the same family.

In his Minggah a wirreenun will probably keep some Wundah, or white devil spirits, with which to work evil. There, too, he often keeps his yunbeai, or animal spirit – that is, his individual totem, not hereditary one. All wirreenuns have a yunbeai, and sometimes a special favourite of the wirreenuns is given a yunbeai too – or in the event of any one being very ill, he is given a yunbeai, and the strength of that animal goes into the patient, making him strong again, or a dying wirreenun leaves his yunbeai to some one else. Though this spirit gives extra strength it likewise gives an extra danger, for any injury to the animal hurts the man too; thus even wirreenuns are exposed to danger.

No one, as we have said, must eat the flesh of his yunbeai animal; he may of his family totem, inherited from his mother, but of his yunbeai or individual familiar, never.

A wirreenun can assume the shape of his yunbeai; so if his yunbeai were, for example, a bird, and the wirreenun were in danger of being wounded or killed, he would change himself into that bird and fly away.

A great wirreenun can substitute one yunbeai for another, as was done when the opossum disappeared from our district, and the wirreenun, whose yunbeai it was, sickened and lay ill for months. Two very powerful wirreenuns gave him a new yunbeai, piggiebillah, the porcupine. His recovery began at once. The porcupine had been one of his favourite foods; from the time its spirit was put into him as his yunbeai, he never touched it.

A wirreenun has the power to conjure up a vision of his particular yunbeai, which he can make visible to those whom he chooses shall see it.

The blacks always told me that a very old man on the Narran, dead some years ago, would show me his yunbeai if I wished; it was Oolah, the prickly lizard.

One day I went to the camp, saw the old man in his usual airy costume, only assumed as I came in sight, a tailless shirt. One of the gins said something to him; he growled an answer; she seemed persuading him to do something. Presently he moved away to a quite clear spot on the other side of the fire; he muttered something in a sing-song voice, and suddenly I saw him beating his head as if in accompaniment to his song, and then – where it came from I can't say – there beside him was a lizard. That fragment of a shirt was too transparent to have hidden that lizard; he could not have had it up his sleeve, because his sleeves were in shreds. It may have been a pet lizard that he charmed in from the bush by his song, but I did not see it arrive.

They told me this old man had two yunbeai, the other was a snake. He often had them in evidence at his camp, and when he died they were seen beside him; there they remained until he was put into his coffin, then they disappeared and were never seen again. This man was the greatest of our local wizards, and I think really the last of the very clever ones. They say he was an old grey-headed man when Sir Thomas Mitchell first explored the Narran district in 1845. We always considered him a centenarian.

It was through him that I heard some of the best of the old legends, with an interpreter to make good our respective deficiencies in each other's language.

In the lives of blacks, or rather in their deaths, the Gooweera, or poison sticks or bones, play a great part.

A Gooweera is a stick about six inches long and half an inch through, pointed at both ends. This is used for sickening' or killing men.

A Guddeegooree is a similar stick, but much smaller, about three inches in length, and is used against women.

A man wishing to injure another takes one of these sticks, and warms it at a small fire he has made; he sticks the gooweera in the ground a few inches from the fire. While it is warming, he chants an incantation, telling who he wants to kill, why he wants to kill him, how long he wants the process to last, whether it is to be sudden death or a lingering sickness.

The chant over, and the gooweera warmed, he takes it from the fire. Should he wish to kill his enemy quickly, he binds opossum hair cord round the stick, only leaving one point exposed; should he only want to make his enemy ill, he only partially binds the stick. Then he ties a ligature tightly round his right arm, between the wrist and elbow, and taking the gooweera, or guddeegooree, according to the sex of his enemy, he points it at the person he wishes to injure, taking care he is not seen doing it.

Suddenly he feels the stick becoming heavier, he knows then it is drawing the blood from his enemy. The poison is prevented from entering himself by the ligature he has put round his arm. When the gooweera is heavy enough he ceases pointing it.

If he wants to kill the person outright, he goes away, makes a small hole in the earth, makes a fire beside it. In this hole he puts a few Dheal leaves – Dheal is the tree sacred to the dead; on top of the leaves he puts the gooweera, then more leaves this done, he goes away. The next day he comes back with his hand he hits the earth beside the buried stick, out jumps the gooweera, his enemy is dead. He takes the stick, which may be used many times, and goes on his way satisfied. Should he only wish to inflict a lingering illness on his enemy, he refrains from burying the gooweera, and in this case it is possible to save the afflicted person.