Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/274

 200 THE ENCOUNTER BAY TRIBE. described, and all the friendly tribes come to lament. The nearest relations cut their hair and blacken their faces, and the old women put human excrement upon their heads—the sign of the deepest mourning. If the supposed guilty one should come to the lamentation, the dreamer looks narrowly to his countenance, and if he does not shed tears is the more convinced of his guilt, and considers it now his duty to avenge his relation's death. The person who sews up the apertures of the corpse runs some risk if he does not provide himself with good string; as if the string should break it is attributed to the displeasure of the deceased, who is supposed to make known in this manner that he has been charmed by him; also, if the small quill used as a needle should not be sufficiently sharp to penetrate the flesh easily, the slightest movement, caused by pressing the blunt point into the flesh, is supposed to be spontaneous motion of the corpse, and to indicate that the sewer is the guilty person. Rather aged persons are not treated with all the ceremonies above mentioned, but are merely wrapped up in mats and placed upon a elevated platform, formed of sticks and branches, supported by a tree and two posts; and after the flesh has decayed, the bones are burned; the very old are buried immediately after death. As the mythology and traditions of other heathen nations are more or less immoral and obscene, so it is with these people. The sun they consider to be a female, who, when she sets, passes the dwelling-places of the dead. As she approaches, the men assemble, and divide into two bodies, leaving a road for her to pass between them; they invite her to stay with them, which she can only do for a short time, as she must be ready for her journey for the next day. For favours granted to some one among them she receives a present of a red kangaroo skin; and, therefore, in the morning, when she rises, appears in a red dress. The moon is also a woman, and not particularly chaste. She stays a long time with the men, and from the effects of her intercourse with them, she becomes very thin, and wastes away to a mere skeleton. When in this state, Nurrunduri orders her