In looking about for another Grammar, I remembered that Mr. Horatio Hale, the philologist of the United States' Exploring Expedition, had, in his volume on the Ethnography and Philology of the Expedition[1], made a short synopsis of two of our dialects. When in this colony, he got access to the Rev. William Watson, then missionary to the aborigines at "Wellington Valley," who drew up for him "an account of the most important peculiarities of the Wiraduri language, modelled as nearly as possible on the Grammar of Mr. Threlkeld, for the purpose of comparison." Further search disclosed the fact that, as early as 1835, a Dictionary and a Grammar had been prepared there, and the Gospel by St. Luke had been translated. How valuable these materials would now be, to illustrate the Awabakal of Lake Macquarie! but Mr. Watson had no relatives in this colony, and on his death his manuscripts were sold as waste paper; so I am told. Fortunately, the late Archdeacon Giinther, of Mudgee, wrote a Grammar of the Wiradhari and collected a copious Vocabulary about the year 1838. The Vocabulary I found to be in the hands of his son, the present Archdeacon of Camden, and it is here published, along with a short introductory Grammar which forms part of the manuscript Vocabulary. A longer Grammar was, many years ago, sent to the home country, and I fear that it cannot now be recovered.
The next labourers in the field of Australian grammar were the Lutheran Missionaries, Messrs. Teichelmann (E. G.) and Schürmann (C. W.) In 1840 they published a "Grammar, Vocabulary, and Phrase-book" of the aboriginal language of the Adelaide tribe. Then, in 185G, appeared the primer, "Gurre Kamilaroi," by the Rev. W. Ridley. Mr. Ridley, who was a man of rare devotedness and self-denial, went among the aborigines of Liverpool Plains and shared the privations of their wandering life, in order that he might learn their language, and so be able to teil them the message of the Gospel. In 1866 (2nd edition, 1875), our Government Printing Olflce issued his book on the "Kamilaroi, Dippil, and Turrubul languages."
A Grammar of some of the dialects spoken in South Australia is contained in Taplin's "Folk Lore," which was published in 1879. This Grammar is given here in a condensed form.
Lancelot Edward Threlkeld, the pioneer in the field of Australian language, died in Sydney on the morning of the 10th October, 1859, having on the previous day preached twice in his own church—the church of the Bethel Union there.
- ↑ See pp. 479-531 of United States' Exploring Expedition during the years 1838-42, under the command of Charles Wilkes, U.S.N. — Vol. VI., Ethnography and Ethnology: By Horatio Hale, philologist of the Expedition. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard. 1846."
