Then its owner, by using the same means as Wyungare had done, ascended thither also.
Then Nurundere went up the Coorong in search of his two lost children. At Salt Creek he met with a blackfellow sitting by a fire. This man by some kind of sorcery endeavoured to detain Nurundere from proceeding on his way, at which Nurundere was angry, and they fought. He speared Nurundere in the thigh; but he laughed at the wound, and said it would not hurt him, and in return speared the blackfellow through the body and killed him. Afterwards Nurundere heard a noise in the bush which was near, and upon searching it, found his two lost children, who had been hidden there by the blackfellow whom he had slain.
After these things Nurundere went to Wyirrewarre, taking his children with him.[1] The Narrinyeri always mention his name with reverence. I never heard them use it lightly or with levity; and if he invented such clever weapons as the taralye or throwing stick, and the panketye or boomerang, and the curved club called marpangye, I think he deserves their respectful recollection. My own opinion is that he is a deified chief, who has lived at some remote period. The natives regard thunder as the angry voice of Nurundere, and the rainbow as also a production of his.
The legends of Nurundere are fast fading from the memory of the Aborigines. The young people know very little about them, and it is only from the old people that the particulars of them can be obtained.
The following are some legends related by the Rev. H. E. A. Meyer, in a pamphlet on the manners and customs of the
- ↑ The natives say that they have some information about what befell this extraordinary personage after he quitted this mortal sphere. When Nurundere left the world he dived down under the ocean, and as he descended saw a great fire under the sea. He avoided this, and keeping away at last arrived at a land in the far west where he now resides. And it is said that all the dead thus dive under the ocean and see the fire, but by avoiding it get to Nurundere. It appears they have an idea that there is one place in which if the dead go there they are confined, and compelled to stay, while there is another place in which all who reach it are free.
