wirreenuns know then that Nahgul is about. They find out where he is. Circling, at a good distance, the spot he is on, they corroboree round it. Hearing them, Nahgul comes out. They close in and seize him, kill him, drink his blood, and eat him; by so doing gaining immense additional strength.
Marmbeyah are tree spirits, somewhat akin to the Nats of Burmah. One, a huge, fat spirit—if you can imagine a fat spirit—carried a green boondee, or waddy, with which he tapped people on the backs of their necks: result, heat apoplexy. A few years ago, an old black fellow laid wait for him and 'flattened him out,' since which there has been no heat apoplexy. We think it is because the bad times have made people too poor to overheat themselves with bad spirits of a liquid kind. The blacks differ, and certainly there were some cases of even total abstainers falling victims to the heat wave.
Hatefully frequent devil visitors are those who animate the boolees, or whirlwinds. If these whirl near the house they smother everything with débris and dust.
The Black-but-Comelys say, as they clear the dirt away: 'I wish whoever in this house those boolees are after would go out when they come, not let 'em hunt after 'em here and make this mess.'
The Wurrawilberos chiefly animate these. But sometimes the wirreenuns use whirlwinds as mediums of transit for their Mullee Mullees, or dream spirits, sent in pursuit of some enemy, to capture a woman, or incarnate child spirit; women dread boolees, more even than men, on this account. Great wirreenuns are said to get rid of evil spirits by eating the form in which they appear. I'm sure we all swallowed a good share of the dust devils, but still they came; evidently we were not wizards or witches.
The plain of Weawarra is haunted. Once long ago there was a fight there. Two young warriors but lately married were slain. As their bodies were never recovered, they were supposed to have been stolen and eaten by the
