Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/623

IX The Kippurs were not allowed to eat the flesh of the female of any kind of animal nor the roes of fish, nor any kind of eggs. All the best of the food was prohibited to them, the old men receiving it and all the dainty pieces.

The ceremonies being concluded, the boys were taken into the bush about four or five hundred yards away by one of the men of the other tribe, and dressed in tribal fashion. Dogs' tails and snakes' skins were tied round the head; ropes of opossum fur crossed over the shoulders like a soldier's cross-belt; long tails of opossum fur hung down from the head to the waist; and strips of kangaroo skin round the arms completed, with a white fillet of braided bark and fibre round the head, the costume of a man. Faces and bodies were painted black, except the nose, which was coloured bright red with grease and ochre. The hair was well greased, and decked with bright parrot feathers.

Each Kippur was armed with two small spears, two boomerangs were stuck in his belt, and he held a small shield and a club called Tabri.

They were then arranged in a row, each with a fringe of green boughs round the waist. The women and girls waited their coming in some small open space near the camp. Stuck in the ground in front of each woman was a digging-stick (Kulgore), with a bunch of leaves tied on the end something like a broom.

When the Kippurs were painted, leaves were stuck under their belts, and they held boughs under their arms. All the people were painted according to the customs of their respective tribes. The Ipswich tribes painted white all down the one side, and red on the other; the coast tribe, black on one side and yellow on the other; the face was also painted yellow, with whiskers made of the feathers of the blue mountain parrot. Some of the men had feathers stuck on them down their sides. The medicine-men wore the yellow crests of the white cockatoo on the top of their heads, and were naked all but a fringe round their middles. Widows, and the women who had recently lost relatives, were painted red with white faces, being in full mourning. They held digging-sticks, with boughs tied to the end.