a continuous hard surface. They struck it with their fists, and with their boomerangs and spears, but in vain. Then the elder of the Yuri-ulu pushed the obstruction with his finger and it opened, and they saw a new country covered with trees and bushes. Looking back at what they had passed through, they recognised it as being the edge of the sky, but they did not wander long in this country, for the younger of the two died. The elder still went on, but after a time he also died. Then they both returned to life, and called to their father, with the voice of thunder, that they had died in a strange land, and could not return again. He, hearing their voices, mourned for them.[1]
These two Wonkanguru legends might be well divided into three: first, the preparation for the ceremony; second, the ceremony itself; and third, the wandering of the Yuri-ulu after circumcision.
The mention of the pirha in these ceremonies, and the dances of the two sets of women, the elder and the younger sisters of the Yuri-ulu, connects it with the legend in which the wanderings of the elder and younger girls, with their pirha song, is given.
Antiritcha, which may be identified with a mountain in the M'Donnell Ranges, fixes the limits of the wanderings of the Yuri-ulu as being somewhat beyond the termination of these mountains.
A Circumcision Legend: Eastern Dieri and Yaurorka Tribes
A girl met her brother, and observed on him the effect of circumcision. Hastening to the Pinnaru, her father, she told him what she had seen, and asked him how it had been done. Instead of replying to her question, he became enraged, and scolded her, saying, "Why did you meet your brother, and see his wound?" He sent his wife away, and with his friends dug a long and deep hole. Then he called the people together from all quarters. The old men threw fire into the hole till it was red hot. Then they called all the women and children to the side of the pit. They obeying the call, the Pinnaru ordered them to place themselves in groups round it, and to dance when the song began. This they did, a man dancing with his wife, a Pirrauru with his Pirrauru, three youths together, and so on, till the Pinnaru pushed them, one group after the other, into the pit. Only a few remained alive of all those people, and the Tidnamadukas,[2] who lived in that locality, observed
- ↑ Even now the thunder is said to be the voice of a dead person who announces that he has returned to life.
- ↑ From Tidna, a foot, and Maduka, a mother, or grandmother, or ancestress. A Tidnamaduka is a man who claims a certain tract of country as his, and whose mother and her brothers claim it for him. Tidnamaduka, or, shortly, Maduka, is the complement of Pintara. Maduka includes everything belonging to the maternal line, as Pintara includes everything belonging to the paternal line. For instance, a father's Mura-mura, together with his "fatherland," is his Pintara, while the mother's brother, speaking of his mother's Mura-mura and his "motherland," calls it his Maduka.
