He falls on his back; they then draw his tongue out of his mouth and separate it at each side from the throat. It is now put back, and he is roused. He stands stupidly looking about him. One of the Bungil Dowa-gunney says to him, 'You are only to live two days'—or whatever the time may be—to which he nods assent, not being able to speak. They then send him home, sometimes giving him a 'possum to eat on the road. At the end of the time he dies, as ordered.
Sometimes it is said they amuse themselves by throwing big 'sow-thistles,' which grow wild in places in the bush, at him; they go right through him, but are pulled out before he goes home, though the poison remains in him.
The last blackfellow reported to have been killed by Barrn was called Bruthen-mungie; but Barrn has been made for the purpose of 'catching' one of the Bony Point blackfellows during the past year. My informant says that Barrn trees have been several times found lately, but that the blackfellows finding them cut them up and throw them away.[1]
The Murrawun is the magical throwing-stick, made of ironbark wood. The person who has learned to make these, and to render them, as the blackfellows describe it, 'big fellow poison,' is called a Bungil-Murrawun. He is said to make it 'carry poison' by rubbing kangaroo marrow on it, and by singing over it. The Murrawun is used to injure blackfellows by pointing at them, making a hissing noise at the same time; by tying a piece of some one's hair on it with some kangaroo fat and an eaglehawk's feather, and roasting the hair, &c., before the fire; in fact it is believed of potent effect in many ways.
I have spoken of a belief that quartz or broken glass can be put into a person's legs or arms. The mode is described as follows:—The track of the person is found; a cross is marked on it with a sharp quartz fragment or a piece of bottle glass; round the cross are stuck in the ground some of the
- ↑ There are numerous strange practices in all parts of the world which have their origin in superstitions like those mentioned.
Tylor states, in his Researches into the Early History of Mankind, that those as to hair and nails belong to Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Moslem lore; and that they are alive to this day in Europe, where, for instance, he who walks over nails hurts their former owner; and the Italian does not like to trust a lock of his hair in the hands of any one, lest he should be bewitched or enamoured against his will.
"The Peruvian sorcerers are said still to make rag dolls and stick cactus-thorns into them, and to hide them in secret holes in houses, or in the wool of beds or cushions, thereby to cripple people, or turn them sick or mad. In Borneo, the familiar European practice still exists of making a wax figure of the enemy to be bewitched, whose body is to waste away as the image is gradually melted, as in the story of Margery Jordane's waxen image of Henry VI. The old Roman law punished by the extreme penalty the slaying of an absent person by means of a wax figure. The Hindoo arts are thus described by the Abbé Dubois:—'They knead earth taken from the sixty-four most unclean places, with hair, clippings of hair, bits of leather, &c., and with this they make little figures, on the breasts of which they write the name of the enemy; over these they pronounce magical words and mantrams, and consecrate them by sacrifices. No sooner is this done, than the grahas, or planets, seize the hated person, and inflict on him a thousand ills. They sometimes pierce these figures right through with an awl, or cripple them in different ways, with the intention of killing or crippling in reality the object of their vengeance.' Again, the Karens of Burmah model an image of a person from the earth of his foot-prints, and stick it over with cotton-seeds, intending thereby to strike the person represented with dumbness. Here we have the making of the figure combined with the ancient practice in Germany known as the 'earth cutting' (erdschnitt),
