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Two very powerful wirreenuns gave him a new yunbeai, piggiebillah, the porcupine. His recovery began at once. The porcupine had been one of his favourite foods; from the time its spirit was put into him as his yunbeai, he never touched it. A wirreenun has the power to conjure up a vision of his particular yunbeai, which he can make visible to those whom he chooses shall see it.
Of course, according to the blacks, to disturb a shadow is to hurt the original. In this Minggah, Guadgee said, were swarms of bees invisible to all but wirreenuns, and they are ready always to resent any insult to the Minggah or its shadow. These spirit-bees had entered Adelaide and secreted some wax on her liver; their bites, Guadgee said, were on her back.
Where this Son is found in Australia, I by no means regard him as a savage refraction from Christian teaching about a mediator, for Christian teaching, in fact, has not been accepted, least of all by the highly conservative sorcerers, or shamans, or wirreenuns of the tribes.
All wirreenuns have a yunbeai, and sometimes a special favourite of the wirreenuns is given a yunbeai too or in the event of any one being very ill, he is given a yunbeai, and the strength of that animal goes into the patient, making him strong again, or a dying wirreenun leaves his yunbeai to some one else.
After a man has been to one Boorah he can have war weapons and is a warrior, but not until he has been to five can he join or be one of the dorrunmai sort of chiefs who hold councils of war, but have few privileges beyond being accepted authorities as to war and hunting. With the wirreenuns rests the real power, by reason of their skill in magic.
Though this spirit gives extra strength it likewise gives an extra danger, for any injury to the animal hurts the man too; thus even wirreenuns are exposed to danger. No one, as we have said, must eat the flesh of his yunbeai animal; he may of his family totem, inherited from his mother, but of his yunbeai or individual familiar, never.
The wirreenuns chant incantations to oust these spirits of evil, and when the eclipse is over claim a triumph of their magic.
The men all gathered together with the boys, except two old wirreenuns, who earlier in the evening have seemingly quarrelled and gone away into the scrub. The men and boys in camp march up and down to some distance from the camp.
All the while, closer and still closer, comes the sound of the Gayandi, as the men call the Gurraymi, or bull roarer. At length the two old wirreenuns come back to the camp and the noise ceases, to recur sometimes during the night, when I expect, did any one search for them, the old wirreenuns would be found missing from the camp.
Sometimes at a large meeting of the blacks the Boogahroo wirreenuns bring the bag and produce from it various locks of hair, which the owners or their relations recognise, claim, and recover. They find out, from the wirreenun, who put them there; on gaining which knowledge a tribal feud is declared a regular vendetta, which lasts from generation to generation.
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