too, in corroboree style. They had made a smoke fire, but the logs instead of being put on it, were placed at a little distance; on these the painted boys sat, the smoke enveloping them.
After they had been seated there some time, their mothers came up behind them, and put their hands on their sons' shoulders. Then they rubbed all the paint off the boys' bodies; the boys never once looking at them. When the paint was all off, the women sang and danced, until the men in charge took the boys away again.
After this, supervision was relaxed except at night. During the day-time the boys might wander at will, so as they kept clear of the general camp. They might not receive food from nor speak to a woman for twelve months, as if they were monks of Byamee in training.
At his second Boorah a young man was allowed to see the sacred fire ceremony, throwing in of weapons, walking on burning coals, and the rest. He saw the huge earthen figures of Byamee, Birrahgnooloo, and Baillahburrah, or Dillalee, and was told all about them; that Byamee having initiated the Boorah, only such as have been through its rites can go to his sky-camp.
Three sins are unforgiveable, and commit a spirit of a guilty one to continual movement in the lower world of the Eleanbah Wundah, where, but for big fires kept up, would be darkness.
There the guilty one had to keep his right hand at his side, never moving it, but he himself perpetually moving. Those who know the blacks and their love of a 'dolce far niente,' will understand what a veritable hell this perpetual movement would make.
The three deadly sins were unprovoked murder, lying to the elders of the tribe, or stealing a woman within the forbidden degrees—that is, of the same hereditary totem, i.e. of the same blood, or of the prohibited family name clan.
But by a curious train of reasoning two wrongs make a right. Should by any chance a man succeed in getting a
