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"No, Byamee, we lent them not." "Go to the camp of the Dummerh, and ask for your dayoorl." The women, with the fear of the fate of the Mahthi did they disobey, went, though well they knew they had not lent the dayoorl.
As they went they asked at each camp if the tribe there would lend them a dayoorl, but at each camp they were given the same answer, namely, that the dayoorls were gone and none knew where. The Dummerh had asked to borrow them, and in each instance been refused, yet had the stones gone.
They saw two black fellows on the other side, who, when they saw the runaway wives and the two children, swam over to them and asked whence they had come and whither they were going. "We are running away from our husband Goomblegubbon, who would lend us no dayoorl to grind our doonburr on, and we ran away lest we and our children should starve, for we could not live on meat alone.
That was the signal for all to leave the creek. Wirreenun sent all the young people into a big bough shed, and bade them all go to sleep. He and two old men and two old women stayed outside. They loaded themselves with all their belongings piled up on their backs, dayoorl stones and all, as if ready for a flitting.
And it was borne in upon them that where the dayoorl went they must go, or they would anger the spirits who had brought them through their camp. They gathered up their belongings and followed in the track of the dayoorls, which had cut a pathway from Googoorewon to Girrahween, down which in high floods is now a water-course.
And scarcely were the words said before they saw a dayoorl moving towards them. At first they thought it was their own skill which enabled them only to express a wish to have it realised. But as dayoorl after dayoorl glided into their camp, and, passing through there, moved on, and as they moved was the sound of "Oom, oom, oom, oom," to be heard everywhere they knew it was the Wondah at work.
They determined to be revenged, so said: "We will make some water bags of the opossum skins; we will fill them with water, then some day when Goomblegubbon is out hunting we will empty the dungle of water, take the children, and run away! When he returns he will find his wives and children gone and the dungle empty; then he will be sorry that he would not lend us the dayoorl."
One day the wives asked their husband to lend them the dayoorl stone, that they might grind some doonburr to make durrie. But he would not lend it to them, though they asked him several times. They knew he did not want to use it himself, for they saw his durrie on a piece of bark, between two fires, already cooking.
She used to crush it on a big flat stone with small flat stones the big stone was called a dayoorl. Gooloo ground a great deal of the doonburr seed to put away for immediate use, the rest she kept whole, to be ground as required. Soon after she had finished her first grinding, a neighbouring tribe came along and camped near where she was.
The seeds of Noongah a sterculia and Dheal, were ground on their flat dayoorl-stones and made into cakes, which they baked, first on pieces of bark beside the fire to harden them, then in the ashes. These dayoorl, or grinding-stones, are handed down from generation to generation, being kept each in the family to whom it had first belonged.
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