Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/407

VII boughs, to drive away the evil influence which had caused the disease. This evil influence, which may be called evil magic, was attributed to an invisible supernatural being called Bori.

A severe headache was sometimes treated by digging out a circular piece of sward, and the patient laying his head in the hole, the sod was replaced over his head, on which the Mekigar sat, or even stood for a time, to squeeze out the pain. Even under this practice the patient sometimes declared himself relieved.

In the Wurunjerri tribe, when a man believed himself to be under some evil spell, or suspected that harm was impending to him, and if, as was likely, he felt ill, he had recourse to the Wirrarap. My Wurunjerri informant, speaking of this, said, "The Wirrarap, looking at him, might say, 'Yes, the fire is up so high,' pointing to his waist. 'It is well that you came to me, the next time they burn it, it might be up to your neck, and then you would be done for.'" The next time the wind blew towards the north, the Wirrarap would go through the air to the place where the man was burning something belonging to that poor fellow, and where that Yaruk (magic) was, pull up the spear-thrower, with which the spell was being worked, and bring it home. Giving the Yaruk to the sick man, he would say something like this, "You go and put this in a running stream to wash all the Yaruk out of it, and I will go up and put this Murriwun (spear-thrower) in some water up there." The reference to the wind blowing northwards is because, in this case, the offending medicine-man belonged to some tribe in that direction, for the Wurunjerri believed that the tribes on the Murray frontage, called by them Meymet, were of all others the most inclined to evil magic. The "going up" by the Kulin Wirrarap refers to the belief that such men could travel invisibly through space; by this means ascending through the sky to the Tharangalk-bek beyond it.

By the Ngarigo the medicine-man is called Murri-malundra, or Budjan-belan, but the former was specially a