Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/395

VII distance, leaving the man lying on his back. The medicine-man then sings a song with the following effect. At the first singing the victim lifts one leg, at the second the other, at the third he turns over, at the fourth a little whirlwind comes, and blowing under his back, lifts him up. At the same time a star falls from the sky, called Yerigauil, with the man's heart. He thereupon rises and staggers about, wondering how he came to be sleeping there. This process is called Deking-ngalluk, or "open side."

Whenever the Wotjobaluk see a falling star, they believe that it is falling with the heart of a man who has been caught by a Bangal and deprived of his fat.

The Yulo was used by all the tribes of the Wotjo nation. By the Mukjarawaint it was made in the following manner. When the corpse of a man had remained on the funeral stage so long that it had become dry, his father, own or tribal, made "magic" of the fibula. He pointed it at one end, and tied some of the dead man's flesh to it with kangaroo sinews, and anointed the whole with some of the dead man's fat mixed with raddle. Being then hung over a fire to make it "strong," it was tied up tight in a bag made of opossum-fur string, until required for use. When used it was swung round by a length of about five feet of kangaroo sinew, and then thrown in the direction of the intended victim, who was supposed in consequence to swell up and die. This instrument was, as a whole, called Yulo or Jinert (sinew), and the victim was believed generally to learn in a dream who had "caught him," and he then informed his friends. In the extreme verge of the country occupied by the Wotjo tribes, on the borderland between them and the Jajaurung tribe, there was the same practice and the same belief as to the falling star.

The song which the Bangal would use to make his victim regain his senses, and go away, is such a one as the following, which belongs to the Jajaurung of the St. Arnaud district. But in this case it is the man's ghost which is to get up and go away.