one day, bathing my head which was aching, when Khourabene, whose bare feet never at any time gave notice of his approach, put his head in at my window, and resting his arms on the sill, said in a voice of great condolence, "Poor old mother—poor old mother"; then with a slight change of tone added, "I cleanum fowl-house—I wheelum barrow—I givum horses hay—little bit of beer, if you please." On another occasion Ned, who was leaving our house in the dusk of the evening, expressed himself as troubled with apprehensions of "Jingy." I could not at first make out what it was that he professed to dread, and, not altogether understanding what he was talking about, I told him to go. Upon this he explained; "Devil frighten, missis—give me beer, and then I anywhere walk!" I laughed at his fears and told him that I had no dread of Jingy or of any other walker of the night, but he treated my assumption of courage with great contempt, reminding me that I was safe at home, whereas he was obliged to go out into the darkness.
There is no doubt that in this case Ned exaggerated his fears in the hope that he might be allowed to drown them in beer, but for all that, it is a real and fixed article of belief in the native mind that Jingy walks the bush at night. Even the most intelligent of the aborigines will assert that at some time or other of their lives they have seen him, but as each apparition of Jingy of which we heard wore a different form, he either was the Australian Proteus, or depended solely on the imagination of his beholders for his bodily shape.
