Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/676

650 wanderings; for, being the benefactors of mankind, they did not need any weapons. But the original site of their home is said to be Antiritcha, where lives Atarurpa. Who this was I have been so far unable to ascertain.

The Yuri-ulu travelled, coming from, the north, through all the land, bringing in the use of the Tula in circumcision. Thus they came to the Beltana country, at a time when a youth was about to be made into a man. When the men were going to burn him with fire, the Yuri-ulu went into the earth, the one on his right and the other on his left, waiting for the moment when they could help him. When a man approached with a red-hot fire-stick to perform the operation, the two Yuri-ulu rose out of the earth, and instantly cutting off the foreskin with their Tula, sank back into the ground invisibly. The men who were present were astonished at the fresh wound, and saw that the boy had been circumcised. They questioned each other as to who had done it, but no one could say. The feeling was such, that they began to say to each other, "Didst thou do this? or thou? or who?" and to grasp their weapons, when he who was about to have done the operation said that he would find out the cause. Seating himself on the ground, and striking it with a club, he sang continuously that he who had circumcised the boy should come forth. Then the Yuri-ulu rose out of the earth biting their long beards, and each holding a Tula in his hand before him.

Then, properly painted and adorned, they danced, and having given the Tula to the men, whom they admonished as if they had been youths, they disappeared, followed by the praises of the assembled men.

After showing themselves in many places as life-givers, they turned back, and at Katitandra, one went west, and the other went east and northwards, bringing the Tula to every tribe.