Page:The Euahlayi Tribe.djvu/67

 A wirreenun can assume the shape of his yunbeai; so if his yunbeai were, for example, a bird, and the wirreenun were in danger of being wounded or killed, he would change himself into that bird and fly away.

A great wirreenun can substitute one yunbeai for another, as was done when the opossum disappeared from our district, and the wirreenun, whose yunbeai it was, sickened and lay ill for months. Two very powerful wirreenuns gave him a new yunbeai, piggiebillah, the porcupine. His recovery began at once. The porcupine had been one of his favourite foods; from the time its spirit was put into him as his yunbeai, he never touched it.

A wirreenun has the power to conjure up a vision of his particular yunbeai, which he can make visible to those whom he chooses shall see it.

The blacks always told me that a very old man on the Narran, dead some years ago, would show me his yunbeai if I wished; it was Oolah, the prickly lizard.

One day I went to the camp, saw the old man in his usual airy costume, only assumed as I came in sight, a tailless shirt. One of the gins said something to him; he growled an answer; she seemed persuading him to do something. Presently he moved away to a quite clear spot on the other side of the fire; he muttered something in a sing-song voice, and suddenly I saw him beating his head as if in accompaniment to his song, and then—where it came from I can't say—there beside him was a lizard. That fragment of a shirt was too transparent to have hidden that lizard; he could not have had it up his sleeve, because his sleeves were in shreds. It may have been a pet lizard that he charmed in from the bush by his song, but I did not see it arrive.

They told me this old man had two yunbeai, the other was a snake. He often had them in evidence at his camp, and when he died they were seen beside him; there they remained until he was put into his coffin, then they disappeared and were never seen again. This man was the greatest of our local wizards, and I think really the