[The Euahlayi Tribe by K. Langloh Parker]@TWC D-Link bookThe Euahlayi Tribe CHAPTER VII 2/15
No one would dare to touch this stone where the baby girls' spirits are launched into space. In the same neighbourhood is a clear water-hole, the rendezvous of the snakes of Bahloo.
Should a man go to drink there he sees no snakes, but no sooner has he drunk some of the water than he sees hundreds; so even water-drinkers see their snakes. The name of the hole is Dahn. Spirit-babies are usually despatched to Waddahgudjaelwon and sent by her to hang promiscuously on trees, until some woman passes under where they are, then they will seize a mother and be incarnated.
This resembles the Arunta belief, but with the Euahlayi the spirits are new freshly created beings, not reincarnations of ancestral souls, as among the Arunta.
To live, a child must have an earthly father; that it has not, is known by its being born with teeth. Wurrawilberoo is said to snatch up a baby spirit sometimes and whirl along towards some woman he wishes to discredit, and through the medium of this woman he incarnates perhaps twins, or at least one baby.
No doubt were it not for signs of teeth in a spirit-baby of immaculate conception, many a camp scandal would be conveniently nipped in the bud. Babies are sometimes sent directly to their mothers without the Coolabah-tree or whirlwind medium. The bronze mistletoe branches with their orange-red flowers are said to be the disappointed babies whose wailing in vain for mothers has wearied the spirits who transform them into these bunches, the red flowers being formed from their baby blood.
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