Goggle Eye gave us a hint to go home, and we took it; we had our revolvers with us, but it is always wise to take a blackfellow’s hint, particularly when he says that a very secret, sacred corrobboree is about to begin.
As we said good-night, Goggle Eye and old Jimmy presented me with two extraordinary-looking broad flat sticks, with black streaks and white dots on them.
“Him goodfellow-stick, that one,” they explained, and it was not till some time after that I found out they had paid me the very highest compliment a blackfellow can pay a “white missus,” for no ordinary woman is allowed even to look at these sticks.
I often wish I had said “Dank you, please,” a little more politely and gratefully for them. A few mornings after the Debbil-debbil Dance, I saw Goggle Eye hide something behind an ant-bed, and then walk up to the house. When he saw me he asked if he might “go bush” for a walk-about, as he was needed at a corrobboree at Duck Creek. I asked him how long he would be away and he said, “One fellow, two fellow, big mob sleep,” meaning that he would be away for a great number of nights or sleeps before he had finished his business.
Then he showed me a little bit of stick with notches on it, and said it was a blackfellow’s letter-stick, or as he called it, a “yabber-stick.” It was round, not flat like most other letters, and was an invitation to a corrobboree, and there were notches on it explaining what sort of corrobboree it was, and saying that it was to be held at Duck Creek. There was some other news marked on it which Goggle Eye told me, and then he sold it to me for some “chewbac,” and I have it to-day, and anyone may see it who wishes. Then he sat down for a yarn, and I asked him why Jackeroo would never eat turkey, and why he always said he mustn’t eat it, because it was his brother.
Goggle Eye said, that was quite right, and that turkeys were Jackeroo’s brothers, for he and turkeys both had turkey spirits inside them, and of course no one could eat his brother. Everybody has the spirit of some animal inside him, he said. If you have a kangaroo spirit, you belong to the kangaroo family or totem; and you must not eat your brothers the kangaroos. If you have a snake’s or an eagle’s spirit, you belong to the snake’s or eagle’s family, and do not eat your brothers the snakes or the eagles. Whatever spirit you may have, you belong to its family or totem, and they are your brothers, and you do not eat them. “All day likee that,” said old Goggle Eye.
I asked him how each person knew which spirit was inside him, and he said that their mothers told them. You see, she knew where she had “caught” her piccaninny. If a piccaninny came to her in a snake’s-spirit country, it had a snake spirit, and if it came to her in a kangaroo’s-spirit country, it had a kangaroo’s spirit, and so on. It all depended on where you came from. It didn’t matter what your mother and father were; your mother might have a snake’s spirit, and your father might have a wallaby’s spirit; but if you came from a cockatoo’s-spirit country, you had to have a cockatoo’s spirit; just as peaches come from peach trees, and plums from plum trees.
Near the homestead was the kangaroo’s-spirit country, and of course all the children who came from there had kangaroos’ spirits, but those who came from the Long Reach, not a mile away, had honey-bees’ spirits.