Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/127



Euahlayi tribe is, like the Kamilaroi, one of those Australian tribes which obtain their name from their word for No. It is organized in four sub-classes, corresponding with those of the Kamilaroi, and female descent. It occupies a portion of the extreme northern (not, as the authoress calls it, north-western), New South Wales, about the Narran River. Mrs. Parker was in close contact with the tribe for twenty years; and the present work is the result of her study of their habits and characteristics. Her two former volumes of Australian Legendary Tales were collected from a people called the Noongahburrahs. We learn incidentally from a reference in the present volume that the Noongahburrahs are a local division of the Euahlayi. We gather, therefore, that this work is the result of enquiries extending over a much wider field than was reaped for the earlier books.

In those books Mrs. Parker gave us a number of native stories, many of them very charming. In the work before us she provides the necessary background of custom and belief. There are, of course, many things in native life that a white woman would not be in a position to learn, or, if she learned them, would be chary of setting down in black and white. On the other hand she would have an opportunity of learning things about the life of the women which would probably be inaccessible to white men. To make a picture of native life complete we ought to have the