Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/591

IX The boys, having been properly instructed, are taken to where the women are, where a hut has been built, in which the boys' mothers are with a smoky fire in front. The boys, seeing their mothers in the smoke, run off into the bush with some of the men.

The bull-roarer is called Marangrang.

While the people are waiting for the arrival of the contingents there is singing and dancing each evening. The contingents when they arrive perform their songs and dances for the amusement of the others. New dances are brought by them and taught to the makers of the Kuringal. In these dances the novices take part with the men.

The teeth knocked out are put in a bag with kangaroo teeth and red ochre, and sent away by the medicine-man who extracted them round to the places from which the contingents came—for instance, as far off as Lambing Flat. With the teeth are sent a boomerang, a club (nulla-nulla), and a shield for club-fighting.

Before his tooth is out a boy is called Bruebul; afterwards he is Nurmung or Kuringun.

The Ya-itma-thang tribe of the Omeo tableland attended the initiation ceremonies on the one side of the tribes on the Upper Ovens River, and those of the Wolgal and Ngarigo on the other. I was not able to learn anything at first-hand as to these ceremonies, excepting that Mallur came down from the sky to knock out the tooth of the boy when he was made a man. As this was the statement of an old woman who had survived all her tribes-people, it merely tells us what was told to the uninitiated by the medicine-men of that tribe. However, as the Theddora branch of the tribe went to the Kuringal of the Ngarigo, we may fairly infer what the ceremonies of the Theddora were.

The bull-roarer of this tribe was about four inches in length, and with notched edges, being fastened by a string to a short stick. Such a one was shown to one of my correspondents, secretly, by a Theddora medicine-man in the