Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/27

 INTRODUCTION. XVll

may be, from a root-word meaning ' white,' Lecause of the white- ness of the bird. This new word would be used by all the kindred and acquaintances of the deceased, and would ere long establish itself in the language of that portion of the tribe as the right name for ' gull.' Again, a boy of the Dungog tribe of blacks, in our own colony, was receiving instruction from the old men of the tribe ; he was required to make a spear, and was sent into the bush to select a suitable piece of wood ; he cut off and brought to them a piece of the ' cockspur ' tree ; this choice was so absurd, that forthwith his instructors dubbed him Bobin- kat, and that was his name ever after. When he died, the word bo bin would disappear, and some other name be found for the cockspur tree. A}id the operation of this principle is not confined to Australia ; it is found also in Polynesia ; but there it has respect to the living, not the dead. High chiefs there are regarded as so exalted personages, that common people must not make use of any portion of their names in ordinary talk, for fear of giving offence. If, for example, a chiefs name con- tains the word pe'a, ' bat,' the tribe calls the 'bat,' not pe'a, but manu-o-le-lagi, ' bird of the sky.' In languages which are not subject to these influences, the derivation of such a word is usually very plain; the Latin vespertilio, ' bat,' for instance, bears its origin on its very face ; but if a philologist, not knowing the history of the word manu-o-le-lagi, were to find it to mean a ' bat ' in a Polynesian tongue, he would be puzzled to explain how it is that a creature so peculiar as the ' bat,' should have been named by a w^ord having so indefinite a meaning as the ' bird of the sky.' Any one who may have had the curiosity to look into lists of names for common things in Australian vocabularies, must have been surprised to see how diverse are these names in the various tribes, but your wonder ceases to be wonder when the cause is known. In fact, we do find that amono: conter- minous tribes, and even in the sub-sections of the same tribe, these words vary greatly; for the presence of death from time to time in the encampments kept up a frequent lapse of words.

To show how much a native language may be effected by this cause of change, I quote here a few sentences from Taplin, who, for many years, was in daily contact with the black natives of >South Australia. In his Vocabulary he says : —

"Therto, 'head'; obsolete on account of death. Koninto, 'stomach'; obsolete on account of death. Muna, ' hand '; not used on account of the death of a native of that name. When any one dies, named after anything, the name of t'^at thing is at once changed. For instance, the name for ' water ' was changed ninr f lines in about five years on accoant of the death of eight men who bore the name of ' water.' The reason of this is that the name of the departed is never mentioned because of a super- stitious notion that his spirit would immediately appear, if mentioned in any wav."

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