Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/522

496 My information as to the tribes farther north along the coast is very fragmentary. My valued correspondent the late Dr. M'Kinlay, speaking of a time as far back as the year 1830, said that "they believed in evil spirits who disported themselves in the night, but also in a master spirit, in some unknown habitat, who ruled their destinies." He said that he did not know his name, but that they often pointed upwards as indicating his whereabouts. He it was who settled them in their country, apportioned them their hunting-grounds, gave them their laws and instituted the Boombat. This shows me clearly that they told him as much as was lawful to tell to an uninitiated man, to one who was not Boombat, for that is their name for an initiated person as well as for the ceremonies. The blacks of Port Stephens, who were of the same great tribal community as those at Dungog, believed in an "evil being, Coen" who could take the form of birds, and possibly of animals. Any mysterious noise at night was attributed to Coen, and they never travelled at night without a fire-stick to keep him off.

In this connection it is worth noticing what Dawson says about Coen, when writing about the time when he was at Port Stephens, before the year 1830. "They are afraid of Coen, an evil spirit of the woods, which they say "Crammer (steals) blackfellow when Nangry (asleep), in bush." Speaking of a thunder-storm, he says, "I could, however, learn nothing from them, except that it was Coen who was very angry, and was come to frighten them; but of the origin or motives of Coen I could not now, more than upon former occasions, get any other explanation than that he was in form a blackman, and an evil being who delighted in tormenting and carrying them away when he could get opportunities."

Some further light is thrown on Coen by what Threlkeld says in his work on the language spoken at Lake Macquarie. "Koin is an imaginary male being, who has now, and has always had, the appearance of a black; he resides in