Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/461

VIII life; for instance, when it goes to see the body of some one who has fallen victim to its evil magic; but after death it could visit its friends in sleep to protect them. An instance of this belief is that of a Mukjarawaint man, who told me that his father came to him in a dream, and said that he must look out for himself, else he would be killed. This saved him, because he afterwards came to the place which he had seen in the dream, and turned back to where his friends lived, so that his enemies, who might have been waiting for him, did not catch him. Among the Jupagalk a person in great pain would call on some dead friend to come and help him, that is to visit him in a dream and teach him some song to avert the evil magic affecting him. The Wurunjerri had the same belief, that each person has in him a spirit, which they call Murup, and which, after death, becomes a ghost. The Murup could leave the body during sleep, and the exact time is fixed as being when the sleeper snored. But the Murup might be sent out of the sleeper by means of evil magic; for instance, when a man hunting incautiously went to sleep in the open, at a distance from his camp, and thus fell a victim to some medicine-man. This belief in the temporary departure of the Murup during sleep still survives in the last of the Wurunjerri, after almost a lifetime with the white man and his ideas.

Berak explained this belief to me as follows: "When I sleep and snore, my Murup goes away, sometimes to the Tharangalk-bek, but it cannot get in, and it comes back. It can talk with some other Murups, for instance, with my father and others who are dead."

The following account which I wrote down many years ago, when he told me of it, is a good instance of the feelings which underlie the belief. His only child, a young lad, was ill, and Berak and his particular friend having taken him to the hospital, returned to where they were living. He said, "We had been crying about him all the evening after we returned," and then my friend went to sleep. When he woke up he said, "I saw that poor fellow, he was here, and he said to me, 'Stand there!' Two strings were hanging