But the name which is first given is frequently changed. Most boys and girls are given a new name altogether as soon as they are regarded as grown-up, i.e. about the age of fourteen. Again, should someone die who happens to have the same name, the child's will at once be changed, for the aboriginals, for reasons which will be explained in a later chapter, never mention the names of their dead. Sometimes, again, as a sign of very special friendship two black people will exchange names.
There is one very curious custom among the blacks the "why" and "wherefore" no one has ever been quite able to explain. One of the things that would strike you most if you could look into the face of an aboriginal would be the great width of the nose. It sometimes extends almost across the face. It looks, if I may put it that way, almost as though it had been put on hot and before it had properly cooled had been accidentally sat upon. The reason is that when babies are quite tiny their mothers flatten their noses, but why they do this I cannot say. Probably a very broad nose is part of their idea of beauty.
It is always pretty to watch children at their play. You will remember how our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, like all child lovers, would often stand in the market place and watch the children playing. Sometimes they played weddings, sometimes funerals, and He once drew a lesson for the Jews from the conduct of those disagreeable and sulky children who would not join in. So it is a very pretty sight to see the little children of wild Australia playing. Like all other children they are very fond of games and grow very excited over them. Little girls may sometimes be seen sitting down and playing with little wooden dolls which a kind uncle or grandfather has made for them, whilst boys and girls alike will often play "Cat's Cradle" for quite a long time, and very wonderful and elaborate are the figures some of them contrive. Yet, like most other children, they like noisier games best. A kind of football is very popular, and they will often play it for hours at a time. Some one chosen to begin the game will take a ball of fibre or opossum or kangaroo skin and kick it into the air. The others all rush to get it and the one who secures it kicks it again with his instep. They get very excited over it and their fathers and big brothers sometimes get very excited too and come and join in, and the shouts and laughter grow until the very rocks begin to echo back their merriment.
At another time they will play "hide and seek" just as white children do, or a sort of "I spy." Another time perhaps a mock kangaroo hunt will engage them. One of them will be kangaroo and the others will hunt him. For a long time he will elude them, but at last he has to own himself captured and allow the hunters to dispatch him with their tiny spears. So, in one way or another, the merry days roll on until childhood's days are done and the education of the young savage, of which you will learn in a later chapter, begins to be taken in hand.
Often when the writer has watched the little black children at their play that beautiful promise in the prophets has come into his mind, "the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof." The prophet was thinking of the New Jerusalem and its happiness, and a great longing has come into the writer's mind for more men and women and children, too, to realize their duty to these forgotten children of the wild, and to take their part in bringing them into that heavenly city. Perhaps all those who read this little book will try what they can do.
CHAPTER III "GREAT-GREAT-GREATEST-GRANDFATHER!"[1]
Every little black piccaninny as soon as it is old enough to understand is told by its mother what sort of a spirit it has inside it, for the blackfellows all believe that their spirits have lived before and came in the very beginning out of some animal or plant. So some children have "kangaroo spirits," some "eagle spirits," some "emu spirits," and some, perhaps, the "spirit of the rain."
The mothers know exactly what kind of spirit each baby has. If it came to her in the kangaroo country then it has a kangaroo spirit and so on. In some parts it doesn't matter a bit what kind of a spirit father or mother may have. Father may have an emu spirit, mother an eagle hawk's, but if the baby came in the snakes' country it will have a snake's spirit.