Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/440

414 to the simple and somewhat monotonous airs to which the words are set, there seems but little melody in the chants. But with custom they grow upon one, until at length one feels in some measure the effect which they produce upon an aboriginal audience in so powerful a manner. There is a wild and pathetic music in some of the songs which I have heard chanted by a number of voices together. Such was the song of Ngalalbal, as I heard it at the Murring Kuringal, and the song of the bat, in which at early dawn the whole of the men joined one by one in chorus, the words describing the bats "flitting about in the dim light which shows between the upper boughs of the trees."

The makers of Australian songs, or of the combined songs and dances, are the poets, or bards, of the tribe, and are held in great esteem. Their names are known in the neighbouring tribes, and their songs are carried from tribe to tribe, until the very meaning of the words is lost, as well as the original source of the song. It is hard to say how far and how long such a song may travel in the course of time over the Australian continent.

A good example of such far-travelled songs is the following, of which I have heard two versions. One runs as follows:—

I heard it first sung by one of the Narrinyeri in 1861, and afterwards Mr. G. W. Rusden sang it for me from memory, having heard it in the Geawe-gal tribe many years before. In neither case was the meaning of the words known.

The second version I heard sung at the Murring Kuringal in 1880 by Yibai-malian, who said that it came to his tribe, the Wolgal, many years before, having been, he believed, originally brought from the Richmond River in New South Wales. The air to which it was sung was the same as I had before heard, but the words differed from those of the first version given, being:—