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The spirits would never enter a person defiled by the white man's 'grog. Old Bootha had an interview with a very powerful spirit after she was ill, who told her that the spirit of her father was now in Bahloo, the moon; and that it was this spirit which had cured her, and if she kept his commands she would live for ever.
Once my garden of roses looked very wilted. I asked Bootha to make rain, but just then she was very offended with Matah. One of her dogs had been poisoned, she would make no rain on his country. However, at last she said she would make some for me. I bound her down to a certain day. The day came; a heavy storm fell just over my garden, filling the ground tank, which was almost empty.
Every now and then we heard a bird note, which made the women glance at each other and say, first, 'Guadgee, then 'Bootha, as it came again, and a third time 'Hippitha. To my uneducated ear the note seemed the same each time. I asked Bootha what it was.
This pole would also keep away the spirits of the dead from the house during her absence. While she was away there would be no one to come and clear the place of evil by smoking the Budtha twigs all round it, as she always did if I were alone and, she thought, in need of protection. Old Bootha has what she calls a wi-mouyan, clever-stick.
She asked one of my Black-but-Comelys, a very stalwart young woman, to help her lift one of these posts into the garden where she wanted to erect it. The girl took hold of one end, but in a little while dropped it, said it was too heavy. Old Bootha got furious. 'I get the spirits to help me, she said, and started a little sing-song, then shouldered the post herself and carried it in.
The totem kins numerically strongest with us were the Dinewans, Beewees, Bohrahs, and Gouyous. Further back in the country, they tell me, the crow, the eaglehawk, and the bees were original totems, not multiplex ones, as with us. It may be as well for those interested in the marriage law puzzles to state that Dinewans, Bohrahs, Douyous, and Doolungayers are always Kumbo Hippi Bootha Hippitha.
Going home Bootha told me that the smoking process was to keep the spirits away, and to disinfect us from any disease the dead might have; and she said had we not been smoked the spirits might have followed us back to the house. They would at once change their camp; the old one would be gummarl a tabooed place; but before they left it they would burn smoke fires there to scare away the spirits.
Hippi said a great deal more would have been spoken and sung at the grave if the dead person had been a man. One curious coincidence occurred in connection with this burial. Seeing the droughty desolation of the country, as we walked to the grave, I asked old Bootha when she thought it would rain again.
Presently her voice ceased and we heard from beside her a most peculiar whistling sort of voice, to which she responded, evidently interrogating. Again the whistling voice from further away. Bootha then told me she had asked a dead black fellow, Big Joe, to tell her what she wanted to know; but he could not, so now she was going to ask her dead granddaughter.
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