While he is out in the bush recovering from his wounds, he must
swing the bull-roarer, or a being who lives up in the sky will swoop
down and carry him off. In the Binbinga tribe, on the western coast
of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the women and children believe that the
noise of the bull-roarer at initiation is made by a spirit named
Katajalina, who lives in an ant-hill and comes out and eats up the
boy, afterwards restoring him to life. Similarly among their
neighbours the Anula the women imagine that the droning sound of the
bull-roarer is produced by a spirit called Gnabaia, who swallows the
lads at initiation and afterwards disgorges them in the form of
initiated men.
Among the tribes settled on the southern coast of New South Wales,
of which the Coast Murring tribe may be regarded as typical, the
drama of resurrection from the dead was exhibited in a graphic form
to the novices at initiation. The ceremony has been described for us
by an eye-witness. A man, disguised with stringy bark fibre, lay
down in a grave and was lightly covered up with sticks and earth.
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