Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/413

VII I also heard of one of these higher branches of the medicine-men's art in the Wurunjerri tribe. Soon after the white men came to Melbourne, a blackfellow living near where Heidelberg now is, was nearly dead. His friends sent for Doro-bauk, who lived to the west of Mount Macedon. When he arrived, he found the man just breathing ever so slightly, and his Murup (spirit, ghost) had gone away from him, and nothing remained in him but a little wind. Doro-bauk went after the Murup, and after some time returned with it under his 'possum rug. He said that he had been just in time to catch it round the middle, before it got near to the Karalk. The dead man was just breathing a little wind when Doro-bauk laid himself on him and put the Murup back into him. After a time the man came back to life.

These were the practitioners of the higher magic, and were credited with powers of which the case of Doro-bauk is a striking instance. But there were others who practised in other directions, and in a lesser degree. Such was a man of the Brataua clan of the Kurnai tribe, who dreamed several times that he had become a lace-lizard, and, as such, had assisted at a corrobboree of those reptiles. Thus it was that he acquired power over them, and he had a tame lace-lizard about four feet in length in his camp, while his wife and children lived in another close by. As he put it, his Bataluk (lace-lizard) and himself were like the same person, as he was a Bataluk also. The lizard accompanied him wherever he went, sitting on his shoulders or partly on his head, and people believed that it warned him of danger, assisted him in tracking his enemies, or young couples who had eloped, and in fact was his friend and protector. As might have been expected, people also believed that he could send his familiar lizard at night into their camps to injure them while they slept. In consequence of the comradeship with lace-lizards he acquired the name of Bunjil-bataluk.

A medicine-man belonging to the Dairgo clan of the