of a kangaroo, corresponding to the Yulo of the natives of north-western Victoria. In the Kurnai tribe men have died believing themselves to have been deprived of their fat, although there were no signs of violence on their bodies. At the same time there is no doubt that the taking of fat was actually practised. An informant on whom I can rely tells me that when a boy, not long after Gippsland was settled, he saw an old man roasting fat which they had taken from a blackfellow, whom they had knocked down with a club. This they ate, and told the boy that they would now have the strength of the other man. The alleged victim of this action did not die, but was killed some time after by his own people for some tribal misdemeanour.
The effect of dreams in which the sleeper believed that he had fallen into the hands of such a medicine-man may be seen from a remark made by my Wurunjerri informant, that "Sometimes men only know about having their fat taken by remembering something of it as in a dream."
The Omeo blacks used to take out the kidney fat of their slain enemies and rub themselves with it when they went out to fight. They used to grease their clubs and put them out in the sun to dry. In reference to this practice my informant said, "Once I was going to take hold of a waddy (club), which was being treated in this way, when the owner ran to me and said that, if I touched it, I should get a very sore hand."[1]
I feel no doubt that the property of evil magic attributed to this weapon was derived from its being anointed with human fat.
The Yuin called the fat-takers Bukin, and the belief extends with the same name in dialectic forms across the Manero tableland to Omeo and down the Murray and Murrumbidgee waters. The Wolgal medicine-man Yibai-malian had the character among the Kurnai of being a Bukin, or, as they call it, a Burra-burrak.
The Wiradjuri greatly dreaded the Bugin, as they call them, and their practices, and attributed to them all kinds of supernatural powers. They are generally believed to be
- ↑ J. Buntine.
