made a good fire, and lay down comfortably in front of it, well sheltered by his covering of bark. The rain fell so heavily that Mirram's fire was put out, and he became wet and very cold. He sat a long time, the cold rain falling upon him, thinking that Warreen would ask him to go into the willum, but this Warreen did not do. At last, quite overcome with the wet and the cold, and when he could not any longer bear the suffering, he went to the willum, and asked Warreen to allow him to go in and sit down in a vacant corner. Warreen said, "I want that corner for my head;" and he turned over and laid his head there. Mirram said, "Never mind, this place (pointing to an unoccupied spot) will do." Warreen moved and laid his feet over that spot, and said, "I want that place for my feet." Mirram spoke again: "This place will do," pointing to the spot where Warreen's feet had been. Warreen answered, "I cannot give you that place; I want to lie this way," and he raised himself and lay down in front of the fire. Mirram grew very angry. He could bear such treatment no longer, and he went away and got a stone, and came back quietly and struck Warreen on the forehead with the stone, and made his forehead quite flat. Mirram, when he had done this, said, "Now, your forehead will always be flat, and you shall remain in a dark hole." Ever since poor Warreen has had to live in a dark hole in the ground; and his forehead is flat at this day, as it was made flat when Mirram struck his head with the stone. But Warreen was at length in a position to retaliate. One day he took his spear and threw it at Mirram. It hit him, and stuck fast at the lower end of his back-bone. "Now," says Warreen, "that will always stick there, and will be a tail (Moo-ee-bee) for you, and you will have to use it when you run, and never shall you have willum." This is how Mirram came to have Moo-ee-boo, and why he has always to use it when jumping and running, and why he has to sleep in the open air.
Boor-a-meel.
The fat of the emu—Boor-a-meel or Burri-mul—is sacred. When it is taken from the bird, it is not handled carelessly. Any one who might throw away the flesh or fat of the emu would be held accursed. It is believed that the fat of the emu was once the fat of the black man. If one black gives a piece of the fat of an emu to another, he hands it to him gently and reverently. The late Mr. Thomas observed on one occasion, at Nerre-nerre-Warreen, a remarkable exhibition of the effects of this superstition. An Aboriginal child—one attending the school—having eaten some part of the flesh of an emu, threw away the skin. The skin fell to the ground, and this being observed by his parents, they showed by their gestures every token of horror. They looked upon their child as one utterly lost. His desecration of the bird was regarded as a sin for which there was no atonement.
The Emu and the Crow.
The Crow one day went to seek for the eggs of the Emu, which he greatly desired to eat. He at length found the nest of an Emu, and he began
