Page:Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales.djvu/19

Rh far as practicable, these women are placed on the side of the yard nearest their respective districts. The other women and the children are lying down a few yards further away from the yard. When all is ready at the bough yard, a shout or signal is given, and the Kooringal, guardians, and neophytes approach in single file, a bull-roarer being sounded by one of the mooeemalla men somewhere in the adjacent scrub. The Kooringal and guardians, carrying nothing in their hands, enter the yard and sit down behind the yam-sticks of their own or tribal mothers. Each boy is taken by the men to the outside of the enclosure, and placed standing beside his mother on the log against which her head is resting. These arrangements are all carried out quickly, so as not to keep the women and children covered up too long. While the women are covered up, some of the men may pick up one or two of the little children, who cannot speak, and put a few marks of paint on them, to make the women believe that Dhurramoolan did it when he brought the novices back. When they are all in their places, the covering is taken off the mothers, who stand up with their heads bowed, and their eyes cast on the ground at their feet: each mother standing in this position, then holds up her arms, and rubs her hands on her son's breast and shoulders, symbolical of rubbing the red paint off him.

At the conclusion of these formalities all the novices run away, not looking behind them as they go, to a camp prepared for them and their guardians a few hundred yards distant. All the other women are uncovered, and advancing, pull down the boughs forming the yard. The men rise to their feet and dance in the middle of the space within the yam-sticks, uttering guttural sounds or grunt-like exclamations. The women then take them to some convenient place close by, where they place them in four groups, the men of each section being together, and light fires to the windward of them, green bushes being thrown on the fires to make a dense smoke.

Next day the novices, carrying a piece of burning bark wrapped in green bushes or grass for the purpose of making a smoke, are brought up near the women's camp. On reaching it they are placed sitting on a log in groups according to the sections to which they belong. The women then light fires on the windward side of them so as to envelope them in a cloud of smoke made by burning green bushes. The Dhilbai women smoke the Dhilbai novices, and the Kupathin women the Kupathin novices. When these observances are concluded, the novices return to the camp to which they were taken the day before. When the boys are being escorted to the women's camp as just stated, an old man swings a small bull-roarer, called mooniburribean, in a secluded spot in the rear. When the women hear this sound they consider that a spirit woman is congratulating them upon having their sons admitted to the degree of manhood.

In a few days after the smoke ordeal just described, the strange tribes who have attended the ceremonies make preparations for their departure. Before the assemblage breaks up, the headmen of each tribe consult together and select the tribe which will have to prepare the next Bora ground, and entertain the people who will assemble there. Each tribe now takes charge of its own neophytes, and takes them away with it.