United States or Algeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As it happened a medical man was passing a few days afterwards with an insurance agent. Matah consulted him. 'Hum! Yes, yes. Hot fomentations to the place affected, poultices, a cooling draught. There's a stoppage of fluid at the knee-joint which must be dispersed. I thought Bootha ought to have been called in consultation.
A girl I had staying with me was taken suddenly and, to us, unaccountably ill. She was just able to get out of her room into the drawing-room, where she would lie back on the cushions of a lounge looking dreadfully limp and utterly washed out. Hearing of her illness old Bootha came up. I thought it might amuse Adelaide to see an old witch; she agreed, so I brought her in.
Masculine Murree BROTHER AND SISTER Feminine, Matha Thus, you see, they take, if girls, their grandmother's and her sisters' 'class' names in common; if boys, the 'class' name of their grandmother's brothers. Bootha can only marry Murree, Matha can only marry Kumbo, Hippitha can only marry Kubbee, Kubbootha can only marry Hippi.
'Water come down. Water come down. Or should it be raining too much, the last possible child of a woman can stop it by burning Midjeer wood. Bootha told me after one rain that she had sent one of her tutelary spirits to tell Boyjerh Byamee is called by women and children Boyjerh that the country wanted rain.
All day until the burial some one of kin stayed beside the coffin, little fires of Budtha kept smoking all the while. In the afternoon old Bootha came for me, and we set out. First in the procession marched two old men of the tribe, behind them some young men, then those in charge of the coffin and the two nearest women relations, immediately behind them the old women, then the young women.
There is no doubt she could diagnose a case well enough. Matah suffered a good deal with a constant pain in one knee, he was quite lame from it. He showed it to Bootha one day. She sang a song to her spirits, then said: 'Too muchee water there; you steam him, put him on hot rag; you drink plenty cold water, all lite dat go.
That evening a messenger arrived from the sheep station to say my cook's mother had died just before sunset. The camp were firm believers in Bootha's witch-stick after that. It was just as well we did not touch that stick; had we done so, Bootha says we should have broken out in sores all over our bodies.
The daughters take the name from their maternal grandmother, the sons from their maternal great-uncle. Of these divisions, called I Matrimonial Classes, there are four for each sex, bearing the same names as among the Kamilaroi. The names are Masculine Kumbo BROTHER AND SISTER Feminine, Bootha Masculine Murree BROTHER AND SISTER Feminine, Matha
No women with babies were allowed to go, nor any children. I came last with old Bootha. The procession moved along an old winding track on the top of a moorilla, or pebbly ridge, pine-trees overarching in places carving the sky into a dome a natural temple through which we walked to the burial-ground.
Our old spiritualist denies us freedom even in the after-life she promises us. Adelaide slept that night, looked a better colour the next morning, and rapidly recovered. We think old Bootha must be a good physician and a ventriloquist, only I believe it is said ventriloquists cannot live long, and Bootha is now over eighty.
Word Of The Day