Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/134

 48 AN AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGE.

Kurriwilbcln, the name of liis wife ; she has a long horn on each shoulder, growing upwards, with which she pierces the aborigines, and then shakes herself until they are impaled on her shoulders, when she carries them to a deep valley, roasts, and eats her victims. She does not kill the women, for they are always taken by her husband for himself. Taho has, by some means, come to be used by the blacks as a name for this being.

M I'l r r am ai, m., the name of a round ball, about the size of a cricket-ball, which the aborigine.? carry in a small net sus- pended from their girdles of opossum yarn. The women are not allowed to see the internal part of the ball. It is used as a talisman against sickness, and it is sent from tribe to tribe for hundreds of miles, on the sea-coast and in the interior. One is now here from Moreton Bay, the interior of which a black showed me privately in my study, betraying consider- able anxiety lest any female should see the contents. After he had unrolled many yards of woollen cord, made from the fur of the opossum, the contents proved to be a quartz-like substance of the size of a pigeon's egg. He allowed me to break it and retain a part. It is transparent, like white sugar-candy. The natives swallow any small crystalline particles that crumble off, as a preventive of sickness. It scratches glass, and does not effervesce with acids. From another specimen, the stone appears to be agate, of a milky hue, semi-pellucid, and it strikes fire. The vein from which it appears to have been broken off is one and a quarter inch thick. A third specimen contained a portion of carnelian pai"tially crystallised, a fragment of chalcedony, and a fragment of a crystal of white quartz.

M u r r k u n, m., the name of a mysterious magical bone, which is obtained by the k a r a k a 1 s, q.v. Three of these sleep on the grave of a recently interred corpse ; in the night, during their sleep, the dead person inserts a mysterious bone into each thigh of the three ' doctors,' who feel the puncture not more severe than that of the sting of an ant. The bones remain in the flesh of the doctors, without any inconvenience to them, until they wish to kill any person, when by magical power, it is said and believed, they destroy their ill-fated victim, causing the mysterious bone to enter into his body, and so occasion death.

Nauwai, m., a canoe; }) u p a, ?»., bark, a canoe. The canoes are made of one sheet of bark, taken whole from the tree and softened with fire, and then tied up in a folded point at each end. A quantity of earth forms a hearth, on which the natives' roast their bait and fish, when fishing.

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