Page:The Euahlayi Tribe.djvu/68

 last of the very clever ones. They say he was an old grey-headed man when Sir Thomas Mitchell first explored the Narran district in 1845. We always considered him a centenarian.

It was through him that I heard some of the best of the old legends, with an interpreter to make good our respective deficiencies in each other's language.

In the lives of blacks, or rather in their deaths, the Gooweera, or poison sticks or bones, play a great part.

A Gooweera is a stick about six inches long and half an inch through, pointed at both ends. This is used for 'sickening' or killing men.

A Guddeegooree is a similar stick, but much smaller, about three inches in length, and is used against women.

A man wishing to injure another takes one of these sticks, and warms it at a small fire he has made; he sticks the gooweera in the ground a few inches from the fire. While it is warming, he chants an incantation, telling who he wants to kill, why he wants to kill him, how long he wants the process to last, whether it is to be sudden death or a lingering sickness.

The chant over, and the gooweera warmed, he takes it from the fire. Should he wish to kill his enemy quickly, he binds opossum hair cord round the stick, only leaving one point exposed; should he only want to make his enemy ill, he only partially binds the stick. Then he ties a ligature tightly round his right arm, between the wrist and elbow, and taking the gooweera, or guddeegooree, according to the sex of his enemy, he points it at the person he wishes to injure, taking care he is not seen doing it.

Suddenly he feels the stick becoming heavier, he knows then it is drawing the blood from his enemy. The poison is prevented from entering himself by the ligature he has put round his arm. When the gooweera is heavy enough he ceases pointing it.

If he wants to kill the person outright, he goes away, makes a small hole in the earth, makes a fire beside it.