Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/207

 SUPERSTITION. 133 CHAPTER XI. SUPPLEMENTARY. ANECDOTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF CHARACTER, CUSTOMS, &c. &c. THE Narrinyeri are intensely superstitious. They thoroughly believe in the power of evil spirits. The following incidents will illustrate this:  One night, about nine o’clock, a very powerful man who was called Big Jerry came to my back door and begged to see me. I went out and found him armed to the teeth with all sorts of native weapons, but he was suffering from severe toothache. He wanted me to give him something to relieve it. I did so, and after an hour he seemed better. I asked him what he had brought so many weapons for. He replied that he was afraid of wild blackfellows and evil spirits. He then begged me to go back to the wurley with him. It was only about five hundred yards off. At first I refused; but he pitifully urged me to do so more frightened to go out in the dark than any child I ever saw. At last I went. It was very ridiculous. I, the unarmed man, walked by the side of the armed man to protect him from Melape and Karungpe, and I don’t know how many other demons besides. There used to live here an old native named Pelican. He was intensely superstitious. One day he complained that his neck felt bad. He said that the night before a wild blackfellow came and kicked him on the back of his neck, and then flew up to the sky in a flame. I tried to reason him out of the notion, but it was all of no use. His neck then began to swell and be painful, and soon showed that there was real inflammation, whatever might be the cause. I treated the place in the best manner I knew how, and it developed into an enormous boil at the base of