Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/533

Rh I have a fair grasp of their language, but would not trust to that absolutely, so I have also one black—not necessarily the same one—but one who knows more English than the old old ones. When the old one has told the legend, I make the medium tell it back in the native language—the old one correcting mistakes. Then the medium tells it to me. I write it down, and I read it back to the old one with the help of the medium; so really I think I guard as much against mistakes as I can. The native word for 'the All-Seeing Spirit,' as such, is Nurrulbooroo, for the 'All-Hearing' Winnanulbooroo. You know they never like mentioning sacred names too often, and names of their dead rarely at all.

"With us, Byamee the name is not derived from the verb to make—which is gimbeleegoo; maker, gimberlah—this word is also used in the Kamilaroi tribes, some of which are within a hundred and fifty miles of us. But the Kamilaroi that Ridley knew are some three and four hundred miles away, so the language is sure to have variations; our Euahlayi language has only a few of the same words as the Kamilaroi.

"Boorool euray would be really 'Big Man' in our language; but whenever I ask any of the blacks what Byamee means they say 'Big Man,' voicing I expect their conception of him.

"A poor old blind blackfellow of over eighty came back here the other day. He told me some more legends, in one of which was a curiously interesting bit re the totems. The legend was about Byamee, and it spoke of him as having a totem name for every part of his body—even to a different one for each finger and toe. No one had a totem name at that time, but when Byamee was going away for good he gave each division of the tribe one of his totems, and said that every one hereafter was to have a totem name which they were to take, men and women alike, from their mother; all having the same totem must never marry each other, but be as brothers and sisters, however far apart were their hunting grounds. That is surely some slight further confirmation of Byamee as one apart, for no one else ever had all the totems in one person; though a person has often a second or individual totem of his own, not hereditary, given him by the wirreenuns, called his yunbeai, any hurt to which injures him, and which he may never eat—his hereditary totem he may. He is supposed to be able if he be a great wirreenun to take the form of his yunbeai,