Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/435

sinews round my neck and waist, and swung me by it and carried me through the air over the sea at Corner Inlet, and set me down at Yiruk.^[1] It was at the front of a big rock like the front of a house. I noticed that there was something like an opening in the rock. My father tied something over my eyes and led me inside. I knew this because I heard the rocks make a sound as of knocking behind me. Then he uncovered my eyes, and I found that I was in a place as bright as day, and all the old men were round about. My father showed me a lot of shining bright things, like glass, on the walls, and told me to take some. I took one and held it tight in my hand. When we went out again my father taught me how to make these things go into my legs, and how I could pull them out again. He also taught me how to throw them at people. After that, he and the other old men carried me back to the camp, and put me on the top of a big tree. He said, 'Shout out loud and tell them that you are come back.' I did this, and I heard the people in the camp waking up, and the women beginning to beat their rugs for me to come down, because now I was a Mulla-mullung. Then I woke up and found that I was lying along the limb of a tree. The old men came out with fire-sticks, and when they reached the tree, I was down, and standing by it with the thing my father had given me in my hand. It was like glass, and we call it Kiin.^[2] I told the old men all about it, and they said that I was a doctor. From that time I could pull things out of people, and I could throw the Kiin like light in the evening at people, saying to it Blappan (go!). I have caught several in that way. After some years I took to drinking, and then I lost my Kiin and all my power, and have never been able to do anything since. I used to keep it in a bag made of the skin of a ring-tail opossum, in a hole of a tree. One night I dreamed that I was sleeping in the camp, and my wife threw some Kruk^[3] at me, and after that my Kiin went out of my bag, I do not know where. I have slept under the tree

1. Wilson's Promontory.
2. Kiin is a word of the Nulit language which was spoken by the Brataua clan to which Tankli belongs.
3. Kruk is menstrual blood.