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Half-forgotten memories of the war corroborees, danced in the far-off days when the tribe was ever moving and ever fighting against the white men; recollections of blood-stained figures of warriors, left on the camping-ground when the rest of the tribe fled before the storm of the white men's bullets, flitted through their brains; stray shreds of tribal wails and dirges, melancholy and depressing, which had terrified them in their childhood, seemed to blend with the voice of the old man, and the eyes which had been dull and heavy began to grow bright and to glitter.
He ought to have been punished with death, but no one cared to interfere with him. Instead of dancing at the great "corroborees," or religious ballets of his people, he would "sit out" with a girl whose sad, romantic history became fatally interwoven with his own. In vain the medicine-men assured him that Pund-jel, the great spirit, was angry.
The dancers sometimes make dumb-show of hunts, fights, slaughters, the women sometimes translating the actions in the songs; sometimes the words seem to have nothing to do with them, and the dances only a series of steps illustrating nothing. Corroborees seem to fit in with the indescribable mystery of the bush.
When ground, the grain was made into little flat cakes, and cooked as the tree-seed cakes were. When the harvesting of the yarmmara was done, a great hunt took place, a big feast was prepared, and a big corroboree held night after night for some time. Just about Christmas time the collarene is at its best; and then, in the olden days, there were great feasts and corroborees held.
That the spirit of the bush is mystery makes it so difficult to describe beyond bald realism, otherwise it seems an effort to seize the intangible. Poor Barcroft Boake got something of the mystery into words. If an Australian Wagner could be born we might hope for a musical adaptation of corroborees.
And in the corroborees that ensued, the poets almost went delirious in trying to find suitable eulogiums to bestow upon the mighty white hunter. The mother whale surpassed in size any I had ever seen or read about. I measured her length by pacing, and I judged it to be nearly 150 feet. My measurements may not have been absolutely accurate, but still the whale was, I imagine, of record size.
But there are comely exceptions. And yet at big corroborees on the occasion of a marriage, the men always chanted praises to the virtue and beauty of the bride! The girl who possessed an exceptionally large and flat nose was considered a great beauty.
I have heard the chant go on all one night and well into the next day, with hardly a break. Hall's Creek is a great place for corroborees, for there are gathered together boys from all parts of Central Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland, brought by coastal overlanders.
Previously they have been tried with boomerang and boodthul throwing, and other arts of sport and warfare, boys of each tribe trying to excel those of the others. If a boy comes well out of these trials the men say he is worthy to be a yelgidyi, or fully initiated young man. When the wrestling and sham fights are over, corroborees begin.
Amongst some native prisoners brought in from the Sturt I saw a primitive wooden horn, on which a sort of blast could be blown. No doubt this, too, has its place in their performances. I am told they keep up these corroborees as long as three days and nights, though certainly not dancing all the time. Probably the stick clapping is kept up by relays of performers.
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