can designate the personal enemy of any man; but they never give more than a general description of the enemy when called upon to be explicit. The enemy is usually called Ngallin-yook.
Mr. Hagenauer says that he has had some three or four Ngallin-yooks in his school at one time. These would not sit near each other, nor look one another in the face. When questioned, each would say that "that one would do something to me." "What would he do to you?" asked Mr. Hagenauer. "Oh, I do not know, but he would do something to me."
In some parts the doctors forbid the burning of any old garments, skins, or baskets, or the burning of old camps and miams.
The doctors can extract the blood of any man, and thus destroy him. The most effectual means of causing death or giving diseases is known only to the priests or sorcerers, but some methods of inflicting pain and communicating fatal illnesses are known to most men. The late Mr. Thomas, many years ago, attended a female who was ill of a fever. He administered medicines, and gave her hopes of a favorable termination to her sickness. She listened to him, and was grateful to him for his kindness, and was willing to believe that all he said might prove true; but at the same time exhibited a deep melancholy. The secret of this depression of spirits she disclosed. She told Mr. Thomas that, "some moons back, when the Goulburn blacks were encamped
three feet apart, filling the spaces between with slighter logs, the building being of conical form, as the base of the erection is wider than its apex; then the stakes are covered with boughs. This hut is only sufficiently large to contain the old men; the young ones sit at the entrance or outside. This completed, the women are called to look at the hut, which they approach from the rear; then dividing, some one way and some the other, go round until they reach the entrance, each looking inside, but passing no remark. They then return to their camp, distant about five hundred yards. Two men, supposed to have received a special inspiration from the Moora-moora, are selected for lancing, their arms being bound tightly with string near the shoulders, to hinder too profuse an effusion of blood. When this is done, all the men huddle together, and an old man, generally the most influential of the tribe, takes a sharp flint, and bleeds the two men inside the arm below the elbow, on one of the leading arteries, the blood being made to flow on the men sitting around, during which the two men throw handfuls of down, some of which adheres to the blood, the rest floating in the air. This custom has in it a certain poetry, the blood being supposed to symbolise the rain, and the down the clouds. During the preceding acts, two large stones are placed in the centre of the hut; these stones representing gathering clouds, presaging rain. At this period the women are again called to visit the hut and its inmates, but shortly after return to the camp. The main part of the ceremony being now concluded, the men who were bled carry the stones away for about fifteen miles, and place them as high as they can in the largest tree about. In the meanwhile the men remaining gather gypsum, pound it fine, and throw it into a water-hole. This the Moora-moora is supposed to see, and immediately he causes the clouds to appear in the heavens. Should they not show so soon as anticipated, they account for it by saying that the Moora-moora is cross with them; and should there be no rain for weeks or months after the ceremony, they are ready with the usual explanation, that some other tribe has stopped their power. The ceremony considered finished, there yet remains one observance to be fulfilled. The men, young and old, encircle the hut, bend their bodies, and charge, like so many rams, with their heads, against it, forcing thus an entrance, re-appearing on the other side, repeating this act, and continuing at it, until nought remains of their handiwork but the heavy logs, too solid for even their thick heads to encounter. Their hands or arms must not be used at this stage of the performance, but afterwards they employ them by pulling simultaneously at the bottom of the logs, which, thus drawn outwards, causes the top of the hut to fall in, so making it a total wreck. The piercing of the hut with their heads symbolises the piercing of the clouds; the fall of the hut, the fall of rain."—The Dieyerie Tribe, by Samuel Gason.
