Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/432

 412 bags (wonduru) and either carried by the people or hung up in trees.

Nardoo is not ground, but pounded to a fine powder, and made into a kind of cake. When fish is plentiful, it is also stored up in the following manner. The fishes are first baked in the hot ashes, then the bones and insides being removed, they are laid on bushes on the ground to dry. When dry the skin is also removed, and the flesh is further dried till it is quite hard and can be pounded to powder and packed away in bags.

Wapaia is a song of travel which is sung at some of the sacred ceremonies by the tribes north of the Dieri and north of the Queensland boundary. The exact meaning of the opening phrase "Dama-inda-ngurpa" cannot be obtained, for the several informants are not even agreed as to the proper sound of the words, and give them different meanings. For instance the Yaurorka and Marunga sing the words, "Lamaa Lamatida ngurpa," &c., without knowing their meaning at all, as is often the case with far-travelled songs.

Yidni kutcht, yidni worana. Yidni is the vocative "thou," and kutchi a "debble-debble " that is believed to travel about in whirlwinds on mischief bent. Worana is a fabled creature, half man, half beast, living on an island in Lake Eyre.

Wolkadra is the same as the sacred churinga of the Arunta, and is carried concealed from all uninitiated persons in the armpit.

The "great water" reached by Makatakaba was probably the Gulf of Carpentaria.

VI.

Long ago Pirinti and Kapiri lived in great friendship at the north-west of Katitandra (Lake Eyre). At that time both had skins of the same colour, so they decided to paint each other.

First Pirinti had to paint Kapiri, which he did with a beautiful pattern. But when Kapiri had to paint Pirinti he thought to himself, "Why should I give myself the trouble to make such intricate markings, when Pirinti is so much bigger than I am. I will make larger patterns on him." He therefore painted Pirinti with some large and some small patterns, and when Pirinti turned his head and saw the unequal pattern that Kapiri had put on, he said to himself, "I painted him very nicely, why has he done me so unequally?"