Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/100

 38 GAMES AND AMUSEMENTS. the songs will consist of the vilest obscenity. I have seen dances which were the most disgusting displays of obscene gesture possible to be imagined, and although I stood in the dark alone, and nobody knew that I was there, I felt ashamed to look upon such abominations. There are also war dances. I have felt the ground almost tremble with the measured tramp of some hundreds of excited men just before a fight. The dances of the women are very immodest and lewd. The men sit and sing, and the women dance. In Cobbin’s Family Bible is a picture, at Luke vii. 32, of the dance of Egyptian women. If it had been drawn for a dance of Narrinyeri women it could not have been more exact. The corrobery of the natives is not necessarily a religious observance; there is nothing of worship connected with it. It is used as a charm to frighten away disease, and also in some ceremonies, but its real character is only that of a song and a dance. I have often been asked for one of the corrobery songs, and a translation of it. It is exceedingly difficult to get. Their songs consist principally of words descriptive of incidents of travel or hunting or war. I never heard of one which was not of this character. A party will go to the country of another tribe; then one of them, who has the talent, will make up a song, descriptive of what they saw, and the adventures which happened to them. This will be learnt by the others; and they will sing it at the first corrobery in the tribe. At other times a hunting adventure will form the subject of such a song, and, having been learnt, will be sung. Once, when I was coming up in the boat from Goolwa, Captain Jack kept on singing. I asked him what he was singing. He replied about that turkey upon the front of the house at the Goolwa. On making more particular inquiry I found that the said turkey was the gilt figure-head of a ship, representing an eagle, which had been saved from a wreck and fastened up over a shop front in that township. This had attracted the attention of my native friends; and so Captain Jack had set himself to make a song about it, and succeeded in constructing a ditty, which, after a line or two descriptive, broke