Page:More Australian legendary tales.djvu/81

 salt water that his tribe might taste it. He also gave him a shell, one of those he had picked up on the beach.

These shells were afterwards the cause of many fights, one tribe trying to get them from the other. The oldest wirreenun of the tribe always wore one of them at the great corroborees. After many generations had passed away, one wirreenun, in whose possession it was, put it for safety in his Minggah, or spirit tree. And to this day there are fights about it, for he died leaving it there. Some tribes try to steal it, but others fight to protect it.

Every now and then on his road home Wurrunnah had to stay and make fresh bags to carry the salt water in, as the old ones started to leak, but at length he reached Nerangledool again, with enough for the elders of his tribe to taste.

None of them knew where he had been, nor could they imagine what this water was which stretched farther than all their hunting grounds. Any stranger that came to the camp was brought to Wurrunnah that he might hear from him what had turned him back on his journey. But Wurrunnah did not live long to tell his story; what he had seen became a tradition in his tribe.

He had broken the law of Byamee by leaving his own hunting ground, so was not allowed to live long after his return.

But yet so famous was he from his far journeyings that when he died, followed by a terrific crash, a huge meteor shot across the sky, thereby telling the tribes for miles round that a great spirit had passed from the earth. From generation to generation was told the story of Wurrunnah's journey and the strange water he had seen,