BY MARY GRANT BRUCE ILLUSTRATED BY J. MACFARLANE WARD, LOCK & CO., LTD. LONDON AND MELBOURNE 1922 FOREWORD Year by year the old black tribes are dying out, and many of their legends and beliefs are dying with them. These legends deal with the world as the blacks knew it; with the Bush animals and birds; the powers of storm, flood, fire, thunder, and magic, and the beings who they thought controlled these powers; with the sun, moon and stars; and with the life and death of men and women.

CHAPTER I The camp lay calm and peaceful under the spring sunlight. Burkamukk, the chief, had chosen its place well: the wurleys were built in a green glade well shaded with blackwood and boobyalla trees, and with a soft thick carpet of grass, on which the black babies loved to roll. Not a hundred yards away flowed a wide creek; a creek so excellent that it fed a swamp a little farther on. The blacks loved to be near a swamp, for it was as good as a storehouse of food: the women used to go there

CHAPTER I Very long ago—so long that the oldest blacks could not remember anything about it themselves—there was a legend of the first coming of Fire. Fire came with a group of seven strange women, the Kar-ak-ar-ook, who brought it from some unknown country. They dwelt with the blacks, and showed them how to use the new and wonderful thing: but they were very selfish, and would give none away. Instead, they kept it in the end of their yam-sticks, and when the people begged for it, they only laug

Long ago, Kari, the Emu, was superior to all other birds. She was so superior that she would not live on the earth. Instead, she had a home up in the clouds, and from there she used to look down at the earth and the queer antics of all the things that lived there. It gave her much food for thought. At that time there were no human beings at all. All the earth was inhabited by animals, birds, and reptiles, and they lived very happily together, as a rule. There were no wars, and every one had enou

CHAPTER I Long ago, black people were scattered all over the earth, and the forests and plains were full of them. But a great flood came. For weeks it rained all day and all night, until nearly all the plains were great swamps. Then the snow was washed from the hills, and the rivers and creeks overflowed their banks, and swept over the country. There was scarcely anything to be seen except the tops of the tallest trees sticking out of the waters that covered the land. All the camps were washed a

Pund-jel, who was Maker of Men, sat in his high place one day and looked at the world. The blacks believed that in the very long ago he had made the first men and women out of clay; and from there they had spread over all the earth. Pund-jel had made them to be good and happy, and for a long while he had been satisfied with them. But now it was different, and he was angry. All over the world he could see his black people. They had grown tall and strong, and he thought them beautiful. They were s

The blacks believed that the earth was quite flat, with the sky arched above it. They had an idea that if anyone could get beyond the edge of the sky he would come to another country, with rivers and trees, where live the ghosts of all the people who have died. Some thought that there was water all round the edge of the earth. They were taught that at first the sky had lain flat on the ground, so that neither sun, moon, nor stars could move, but the magpies came along and propped it up with long

Before Pund-jel, Maker of Men, peopled the earth with the black tribes, and very long before the first white man came to Australia, the animals which inhabited the land fell into a great trouble. And this is how it happened. Old Conara, the black chief, told it to me while we were fishing for cod in the Murray one hot night; and he had it from his father, whose mother had told him about it; while to her the story had come from her grandfather, who said he was a little boy when his grandfather ha

CHAPTER I Very long ago, before the white man came to conquer the land, a tribe of black people lived in a great forest. Beyond their country was a range of mountains which separated them from another tribe of fierce and warlike blacks, and on one side they were bounded by the sea. They were a prosperous tribe, for not only was there plenty of game in the forest, to give them food and rugs of skins for clothing, but the sea gave them fish: and fish were useful both to eat and for their bones. Th

Mirran, the Kangaroo, and Warreen, the Wombat, were once men. They did not belong to any tribe, but they lived together, and were quite happy. Nobody wanted them, and they did not want anybody. So that was quite satisfactory. Warreen was the first. All his tribe had been drowned in a flood, leaving him quite alone. So he found a good camping-place, where there were both shelter and water, and he made himself a camp of bark, which he called, in the language of his tribe, a willum. He was not in a

The Chief Wonkawala was a powerful man, who ruled over a big tribe. They were a fierce and warlike people, always ready to go out against other tribes; and by fighting they had gained a great quantity of property, and roamed unmolested through a wide tract of country—which meant that all the tribe was well-fed. Wonkawala had not always been a chief. He had been an ordinary warrior, but he was fiercer and stronger than most men, and he had gradually worked his way up to power and leadership. Ther

No one in the Bush ever had a good word to say for the Crows. From the very earliest times they were a noisy, mischievous race, always poking their strong beaks into what did not concern them, and never so happy as when they were annoying other people. Whatever a mother Crow taught her chickens, civility and good manners were not included in the lessons; they were accomplishments for which none of the family had the slightest use. It did not at all trouble the Wokala, as the Crows were called, t

CHAPTER I Kur-bo-roo was a little black boy baby. His father and mother had no other children, and so they were very proud of him, and he always had enough to eat. It is often very different when there are many hungry pickaninnies to be fed—especially in dry seasons, when roots and yams and berries are hard to find, and a black mother's task of filling her dilly-bag becomes more difficult every day. Then it may happen that the children are quite often hungry, and their ribs show plainly through

CHAPTER I Once there was a time when the blacks had no fire. They had not learned the way to make it by rubbing two sticks together; or if they had once known the way, they had forgotten it. And they were very miserable, for it was often cold and wintry, and they had no fire to warm them, nor any way of cooking food. Fire had been theirs once. But there came two women upon the Earth; strange women, speaking in unknown tongues, with great eyes in which there was no fear. They did not love the bla