Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/400

374 the medicine-men of neighbouring tribes lower down the Murray and the Murrumbidgee Rivers. These are called Dulu-durrai, from Dulu, the great jag-spear, and are said to carry the pointed bone, and the long end of plaited sinew, called by the Wiradjuri Gungur, the analogue of the Wotjobaluk Yulo.

Watching till the victim sleeps, the Bugin is supposed to creep to him, pass the bone under his knees, round his neck, and through the loop end of the cord of sinew. Thus having secured his victim, the Bugin carries him away to extract his fat. This is said to be done in the manner already described.

The Bugin is thought to be able to walk invisibly, and to turn himself into an animal at will. My Wiradjuri informant, Murri-kangaroo, in speaking of this practice of the Bugin, of which he expressed great dread, said as follows:—"If I saw an old man kangaroo come hopping up, and sit and stare at me, I should keep my eyes fixed on him and try to get out of his way, lest he might be a Bugin, who, getting behind me, would have me at a disadvantage."

The Bugin when hard pressed is believed to be able to turn himself into a stump, or other inanimate object, or to go down into the ground out of sight, to escape his pursuers. Yibai-malian, the before-mentioned medicine-man, professed to have saved himself from the pursuit of his enemies by having entered into a horse and thus galloped off, a feat which was thought much of by the Murring to whom he told it.

Once when a feud was in progress between the Omeo people and those living at Bruthen in Gippsland, the former accounted for their enemy coming upon them unawares by saying that the medicine-men of the Gippsland blacks could turn themselves into crows, and fly about to watch the motions of the Omeo men.

A very dangerous practice attributed to the Bugin is to get inside a tree, and when a blackfellow is climbing it to cause a limb of which he has laid hold to break off suddenly, so that he falls to the ground and becomes an easy victim.