[The Euahlayi Tribe by K. Langloh Parker]@TWC D-Link book
The Euahlayi Tribe

CHAPTER XI
9/15

The Eagle-hawk owns Gooroongoodilbaydilbay, and flies with her in the shape of high clouds.

Yarragerh is a man, and he has for wives the Budtha, Bibbil, and Bumble trees, and when he breathes on them they burst into new shoots, buds, flowers, and fruits, telling the world that their lover Yarragerh, the spring, has come.
Douran Doura woos the Coolabah, and Kurrajong, who flower after the hot north wind has kissed them.
The women winds have no power to make trees fruitful.

They can but moan through them, or tear them in rage for the lovers they have stolen, whom they can only meet twice a year at the great corroboree of the winds, when they all come together, heard but never seen; for Mayrah, the winds, are invisible, as were the Mayrah, the tribe who in bursting gave them birth.
Yarragerh and Douran Doura are the most honoured winds as being the surest rain-bringers.

In some of the blacks' songs Mayrah is sung of as the mother of Yarragerh, the spring, or as a woman kissed into life by Yarragerh putting such warmth into her that she blows the winter away.
But these are poetical licences, for Yarragerh is ordinarily a man who woos the trees as a spring wind until the flowers are born and the fruit formed, then back he goes to the heaven whence he came.
Then there are the historical landmarks: Byamee's tracks in stone, and so on, and the battle-fields, too, of old tribal fights.

Just in front of our station store was a gnarled old Coolabah tree covered with warty excrescences, which are supposed to be seats for spirits, so showing a spirit haunt.
In this particular tree are the spirits of the Moungun, or armless women, and when the wind blows you could hear them wailing.


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