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Should a boy or a girl eat plains turkey or bustard eggs while they were yet wunnarl, or taboo, he or she would lose his or her sight. Should they eat the eggs or flesh of kangaroo or piggiebillah, their skins would break out in sores and their limbs wither. Even honey is wunnarl at times to all but the very old or very young.
The wunnarl, or food taboo, was taken off a different kind of food for boys at each Boorah, until at last they could eat what they pleased except their yunbeai, or individual familiar: their Dhe, or family totem, was never wunnarl or taboo to them. A child may not perhaps know that it has had a yunbeai given to it, and may eat of it in ignorance, when immediately they say that child sickens.
The boy, shaking and shivering, made a spluttering noise with his lips; after that he could eat of the hitherto forbidden food. This did not necessarily refer to his totem, but any food wunnarl to him, though it is possible that there may have been a time in tribal history, now forgotten, when totems were wunnarl, and these ceremonies may be all that is left to point to that time.
A girl, too, had to be rubbed with the fat and blood of anything from which the wunnarl was to be removed for her. No ceremony of this sort would be gone through with the flesh, fat, or blood of any one's yunbeai, or individual familiar animal, for under no circumstances would any one kill or eat their yunbeai.
Fish is wunnarl for about four years after his Boorah to a boy, and about four months after she is wirreebeeun, or young woman, to a girl. When the wunnarl was taken off a particular kind of meat, a wizard poured some of the melted fat and inside blood of that animal or bird, as the case might be, over the boy, and rubbed it into him.
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