Page:More Australian legendary tales.djvu/54

 crane-like bird now on the plain. Wurrawilberoo must have seized her again and taken her after all, they said.

As soon as the Mullee Mullees, which had animated the whirlwinds, returned from placing the balah trees and the Wurrawilberoo in the sky, the Daens asked them if they had left her there.

No Brälgah they said had gone to the sky. Surely the Daens had seen Wurrawilberoo let her go.

Then where was she?

That no one could say, and none thought of asking the big bird on the plain. All mourned for Brälgah as for one dead. Her spirit, they said, would haunt the camp because they could not find her body to bury it, though they knew she must be dead, otherwise would she not return to them?

They moved their camp away to the other side of the plain.

After a while they noticed that a number of birds, like the one they had seen on the plain at the time of Brälgah's disappearance, came feeding round not far from, their camp, and after feeding for a while these birds would begin to corroboree; such a strange corroboree, of which one bird taller than the others was seemingly a leader.

This corroboree was so human and like no movements of any other birds, like indeed nothing of the sort that the Daens had ever seen, unless it were the dances of the lost Brälgah.

Out on to a clear space the leader would lead her troupe, There would be much craning of necks, and bowing, pirouetting, stately measured changing of places; then gyrating with wings extended, just as Brälgah had been wont to fling her arms, before she madly whirled around