Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/134

129 general way, they are every one drunkards, and that, too, of the very worst type. When under the influence of spirits their savage nature runs riot to a frightful extent; nothing in fact can control it short of solitary confinement. Though one of their greatest antipathies is the lock-up, they will even brave the chance of twenty-four hours of its gloom rather than forego the fiery draught which opportunity may offer to their longing lips.

The poetical faculty is altogether lacking in the aboriginal character, consequently they do not possess any poems, either martial or national, and the absence of sentiment in the intercourse of one sex with another leaves the largest of all poetical fields but a barren waste. Their tchowies (songs), to which they dance their corrobories, never comprise more than two lines, and even these do not jingle; their measure however, is always most perfect, and in their dances the time is unexceptionable. As a rule their brief songs have reference either to something good to eat, to some successful midnight fray, or to some grossly lewd subject, and those partaking of the latter nature meet with the greatest appreciation.

Tchowies are not transmitted from one generation to another, because when the maker of a tchowie dies all the songs of which he was author are, as it were, buried with him, inasmuch as they, in common with his very name, are studiously ignored from thenceforward, and consequently forgotten.

This custom of endeavouring to forget everything which had been in any way connected with the dead, entirely precludes the possibility of anything of an historical nature