Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/270

244 instance of the power of the paternal grandparents; but it is accentuated, and perhaps explained in part, by the fact that it depended on the paternal grandfather, and failing him the maternal, whether under certain circumstances a child should be brought up or killed.

An old Wotjobaluk man gave me an instance of how, under certain circumstances, a man might obtain a wife. If at one of their festive gatherings, to which people came from a distance, one of the young men distinguished himself as a dancer, the parents and grandparents of a girl whom he desired to have as a wife would be influenced in his favour by his skill. But even in this case, the arrangements would be made by the brothers, and the young man would have to find a sister to exchange for his wife.

Cases were known where a man compelled the kindred of a girl to give her to him as a wife, by obtaining some of her hair and threatening to burn it, this phrase indicating one of the Wotjobaluk practices of evil magic. In such a case her kindred would either have to give her to him, as sometimes happened, or run the risk of her being done to death by means of Guliwil, or they would have to prevail on him to give up the hair. If, however, he persisted in the attempt, and the girl became ill, or died, he suffered the consequences of having killed her by magic.

A curious practice connected with this obtained in the most eastern branch of the Jupagalk tribe which at the Avon River adjoined the Jajaurung. When it had been agreed that a boy and a girl should be promised to each other, the boy went to the girl, and with a mussel-shell cut some of her hair off, which he gave to his mother to take care of for him. If the girl refused to become his wife, or if she ran off with some man, then her promised husband took this hair, and rubbing some fat from a black snake on it, tied it up with a Guliwil and set it up before his fire when no one was about. After a time he would hear the girl's voice in a complaining tone proceeding from the hair. He then put it up in the bark covering of his camp, and watched it at night till he could see the Gulkan-gulkan (ghost, spirit) of the girl sneaking near, trying to get the parcel with her hair.