of ancestral souls, as among the Arunta. To live, a child must have an earthly father; that it has not, is known by its being born with teeth.
Wurrawilberoo is said to snatch up a baby spirit sometimes and whirl along towards some woman he wishes to discredit, and through the medium of this woman he incarnates perhaps twins, or at least one baby. No doubt were it not for signs of teeth in a spirit-baby of immaculate conception, many a camp scandal would be conveniently nipped in the bud.
Babies are sometimes sent directly to their mothers without the Coolabah-tree or whirlwind medium.
The bronze mistletoe branches with their orange-red flowers are said to be the disappointed babies whose wailing in vain for mothers has wearied the spirits who transform them into these bunches, the red flowers being formed from their baby blood. The spirits of babies and children who die young are reincarnated, and should their first mother have pleased them they choose her again and are called millanboo—the same again.
They can instead, if they like, choose some other woman they know, which seems very accommodating in those presiding over the reincarnation department.
Sometimes two baby spirits will hang on one branch and incarnate themselves in the same woman, who as result is the mother of twins, and the object of much opprobrium in the camp. In fact, in the old days, one of the twins would have been killed.
One of my Black-but-Comelys said, on hearing that a woman had twins:
'If it had been me I would have put my fingers round the throat of one of them and killed it.' The woman who made this speech I had always looked upon as the gentlest and kindliest of creatures.
The father of the twins has treated his wife with the utmost contempt since their birth, and declines to acknowledge more than one of the babies.
