Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/310

 232 THE PORT LINCOLN TRIBE. hour, two men procure a number of green boughs, the boys are again raised on their feet, but still blindfolded, by their indanyanas, and all the rest of the men range themselves in a halfcircle. Placing themselves opposite to the open side of the semicircle, and assuming the attitudes and gestures of violent rage, the two men with the boughs throw them over the heads of the wilyalkinyis, which the rest accompany with beating of waddies and uttering a number of short shouts, dwelling only on the last, every time that a branch falls to the ground, in this mannerYe, ye ye, yay. The lads are now laid on the green boughs and covered up again, when the company very leisurely and deliberately commence preparing chips of quartz for tattooing the wilyalkinyis, and inventing new names by which they are to be called during their future lives. This last-mentioned business is always attended with great difficulty, as the new name must not only be agreeable to their ideas of euphony, but also quite original, or such as has not previously belonged to any other person. In most, cases these names are roots of verbs, augmented by the termination -alta, or -ulta, according to the terminating vowel of the dissyllabic root. Whether these endings affect the meaning of the words in any way, must remain a matter of speculation, as they never occur but in proper names. The natives have no objection to be assisted in the invention of names, but they will be careful to select out of the number mentioned to them, only such as they think are appropriate and new. Everything being prepared, several men open veins in their lower arms, while the young men are raised to swallow the first drops of the blood: they are then directed to kneel on their hands and knees, so as to give a horizontal position to their backs, which are covered all over with blood: as soon as this is sufficiently coagulated, one person marks with his thumb the places in the blood, where the incisions are to be made, namely, one in the middle of the neck, and two rows from the shoulders down to the hips, at intervals of about a third of an inch between each cut. These are named Manka, and are ever after held in such veneration, that it would be deemed a great profanation to allude to them in the presence