their sorrow found that the stranger Ngura-tulu-tulu-ru and their Tayi had both disappeared.
Then they formed a Pinya (blood-revenge party), and having found the track of the thief, they followed him hastily.
At Ngapa-kangu[1] they met with a man whom they killed, thinking him to be Tayi-tampana, and it was- only after he was dead that they found out their mistake. Then they again followed Tayi-tampana's tracks to Malka-malkara,[2] where they overtook him, and came upon him from two directions. When he saw himself suddenly surrounded by a Pinya, he took the Tayi from his head, and using it as a shield, stopped all the boomerangs thrown at him. These he collected, and then attacking the Pinya, he pursued them as far as Pinya-maru,[3] where he killed them, and turned them into stones, which are black because the men of the Pinya were painted of that colour. Going back for the Tayi, which he had left behind, he was attacked by the remainder of the Pinya, whose weapons he stopped with the stone for a shield; and having gathered them up, he followed his enemies, and killed them. So deeply did he strike them into the ground that a deep pit was formed, from which that place has been called Yidni-minka.[4]
Having done this, he went back, and on his way he again slew a number of those sent against him at Madra-yurkuma.[5] Then taking his Tayi under his arm he went to Meriwora. The Pinya had by this time again collected against him. When they began to throw their boomerangs against him, he threw himself on the ground face downwards, and placed the stone in such a manner on his back that no weapon could injure him. But he was buried under the Tayi and was turned into stone.
Ngura-wordu-punnuna[6]: A Dieri Legend
A Mura-mura named Ngura-wordu-punnuna lived at Pando, and caught rats and mice, which were there in great numbers, for his
- ↑ Ngapa-kangu, in Yaurorka and Dieri, is "flax-in-water."
- ↑ Malka is the Mulga tree; the name means a freshly-shooting Mulga tree.
- ↑ Maru is " black."
- ↑ Now shown on the maps as Innamincka. Another version of this legend says that it was Ngura-tulu-tulu-ru who gave it this name, by saying to the men he had killed, "Yidni minka (nganamai)!" that is, "Thou (shalt be) a hole!" The legend which follows this says that it was the Mura-mura Ngura-wordu-punnuna who named this place.
- ↑ Madra is Yaurorka for a stone; in Dieri, Mada. Yurkuma in Yaurorka and Dieri is "to carry under the arm." The place is so called because the petrifactions referred to appear to the narrators to be carrying bags under their arms after the custom of the Pinya.
- ↑ Nura is "tail," Wordu is "short," and Punnu is the place where a creek enters a lake, in this sense meaning, "He with the short tail, at the embouchure" into Pando, that is. Lake Hope.
