Boyl-ya is the native name for a sorcerer.) This attack upon her character was more than the younger female could be expected to submit to, she therefore in return chanted: Oh, you lying, artful one, Wag away your dirty tongue, I have watched your tell-tale eyes, Beaming love without disguise: I've seen young Imbat nod and wink, Oftener perhaps than you may think.
What further she might have said I know not; but a blow upon the head from her rival, which was given with the stick the women dig up the roots with, brought on a general engagement, and the dispute was finally settled by the husband beating several of his wives severely about the head with a hammer.
The ferocity of the women when they are excited exceeds that of the men; they deal dreadful blows at one another with their long sticks, and if ever the husband is about to spear or beat one of his wives the others are certain to set on her and treat her with great inhumanity.
CHANT EXCITING TO REVENGE.
The next translation is that of a chant sung by an old woman to incite the men to avenge the death of a young man who died from a natural cause, but whose death she attributed to witchcraft and sorcery; the natives, who listened to her attentively, called her chanting goranween, or abusing.

She stood with her legs wide apart, waving her wanna, or long digging stick in the air, and rocking her body to and fro, whilst her kangaroo-skin cloak floated behind her in the wind.

She was thus quite the beau ideal of a witch.

The following is the sense of the words she used, at least as nearly as it is possible to express their force and meaning in English.
The blear-eyed sorcerers of the north, Their vile enchantments sung and wove, And in the night they issued forth, A direful people-eating drove.
Feasting on our loved one, With gore-dripping teeth and tongue, The wretches sat, and gnawed, and ate, Whilst their victim soundly slept.
Yho, yang, yho yang, yang yho.
Aye--unconsciously he rested In a slumber too profound; The vile boyl-yas sat and feasted On the victim they had bound In resistless lethargy.
Mooli-go, our dear young brother, Where is another like to thee?
Tenderly loved by thy mother, We again shall never see Mooli-go, our dear young brother, Yho, yang yho, ho, ho.
Men, who ever bold have been, Are your long spears sharpened well?
Is the keen quartz fixed anew?
Let each shaft upon them tell.
Poise your meer-ros long and true: Let the kileys whiz and whirl In strange contortions through the air; Heavy dow-uks at them hurl; Shout the yell they dread to hear.
Let the young men leap on high, To avoid the quivering spear; Light of limb, and quick of eye, Who sees well has nought to fear.
Let them shift, and let them leap, When the quick spear whistling flies; Woe to him who cannot leap! Woe to him who has bad eyes! FEMALE ENERGY IN CHANTING.
When one of these old hags has entered upon a chant of this kind nothing but complete exhaustion induces her to stop, and the instant she pauses another takes up the burden of her song.

The effect some of them produce upon the assembled men is very great; in fact these addresses of the old women are the cause of most of the disturbances which take place.