Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/559

IX "Hallo there, you (mentioning his name), stop and come back to me—yah!" This gave to the whole of the proceedings, up to the time when we reached the Talmaru camp, in the recesses of the mountain, a sort of Carnival and April fool aspect.

The old men told me that the meaning of this inverted manner of speaking, of saying one thing when the speaker intended another, was to break the boys of a habit of telling lies, and to make them for the future truth-speaking.

The ceremonies are also intended to rivet the influence and power of the old men on the novices, who have heard from their earliest childhood tales of the fearful powers of the Gommeras, and of the Joïas by which they can cause sickness and death. At these ceremonies the Joïas are exhibited. A young man said to me after his initiation, "When I was a little boy I did not believe all I heard about the Joïas, but when I saw the Gommeras at the Kuringal bringing them up from their insides, I believed it all."

These remarks will be illustrated by the incidents which I am about to describe.

At the halt made the Kabos placed their boys in a row, and two old men sat down before them on the ground, facing each other with their feet touching. In the oval space thus enclosed by their legs they proceeded to make a "mud pie" of the wet soil, which they smoothed and patted into the semblance of a cake, with childish manner and gestures. All the men danced round them uttering some word which I omitted to note. Several men then came to the boys and spoke to them, in their buffoon manner, pointing at the same time to the dirt cake. It fortunately happened that one of the boys was a Bemeringal, whose language differed from that of the Katungal so much that throughout the ceremonies, while the men spoke to the Katungal boys in their own language, they spoke to the Bemering boy in the broken English which is used by the blacks and whites in speaking to each other. Thus I was able to follow the whole course of instruction and admonition very satisfactorily, and also to check the explanations given me by my friends Yibai-malian and Umbara and others. The men said, "Look at that!