The celebrating camp in the interim has been busily preparing for the approaching event. Nightly corrobborees have been held at the chosen spot by both the men and the women, and the novice has repeatedly appeared before the performing crowd richly decorated and besmeared with emu-fat and ochre. At no time, however, even after the invited guests have arrived, does the excitement become anywhere near as great as during the initiation ceremonies of the opposite sex; in fact, at its best, the performance is extremely dull and monotonous.
When at length it becomes apparent that even the principal actors themselves are tiring, it seems as though the moment had arrived when only a desperate decision could revive the enthusiasm. A number of men, who stand in the same group-relationship to the novice as her future husband, lead the girl away without any ado, except perhaps that the remaining members slightly spur their acting. This stage is mostly reached at daylight, as often as not early in the morning, after the whole night has been spent in dancing and singing.
Away from the din of her tribespeople’s celebration in honour of the occasion of her stepping from girlhood to womanhood, the silent victim is told to squat on the ground whilst the men surround her. Her oldest “group-husband” produces a flat, wooden tjuringa, of the “male” type, with which he several times touches her person, whilst he mutters incoherent and garbled words. This is done to dispel from her all possible pain and likely loss of blood during the operation she is about to be submitted to.
Then she is requested to lie flat on her back, and her head is placed upon the lap of one of the men who squats to keep it there. It follows the act which is destined to make her marriageable; her virginity is doomed to mechanical destruction.
The instruments, if any, which are used for the operation vary according to locality. In the central areas (Aluridja, Wongapitcha, Kukata), an ordinary stone-knife with resin haft is used. The Victoria desert tribes employ cylindro-conical stones from six to eight inches long, and from one and a half to two inches in diameter. Among the tribes of the northern Kimberley districts of Western Australia no real instrument is used at all, but the operator winds the index and middle fingers of his right hand together with a long piece of fur-string; and this device answers the same purpose as the above-named instruments.
The tribes indulging in this practice admit that their action is prompted by a desire to offer the girl’s pudicity to one of her spirit-husbands. We might indeed look upon this rite as the equivalent of sacrificing the jus primae noctis to a mythical or legendary tribal relative who is supposed to be living in the astral form and who is likely to come back to earth at any day.
PLATE XXXII
An episode of the great fire ceremony, Kolaia tribe.
“Presently the music starts again, and the spirit known as ‘Ngardaddi’ is seen to be stealthily creeping towards the fire, his body lying flat upon the ground and his legs dragging behind.”