Girdles: their origin and development, particularly with regard to their use as charms in medicine, marriage, and midwifery / [Walter J. Dilling].

  • Dilling, Walter J. (Walter James), 1886-1950.
Date:
1913-14
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Girdles: their origin and development, particularly with regard to their use as charms in medicine, marriage, and midwifery / [Walter J. Dilling]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    may chance to pass near, and it is firmly believed that visiting the stone will result in conception.1 2 If a young woman has to pass near to the stone and does not wish to have a child, she will carefully disguise her youth, distorting her face, and walking with the aid of a stick. She will bend herself double like a very old woman, the tones of whose voice she will imitate, saying, ‘Don’t come to me, I am an old woman.’ Above the small round hole a black line is painted with charcoal, and this is always renewed by any man who happens to visit the spot. [See Fig. 2, which is reproduced from Spencer and Gillen’s ‘Northern Tribes of Central Australia,’ by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan.] It is called ‘ Iknula,’ and a black line such as this, and called by the same name, is always painted above the eye of a newly-born child, as it is supposed to prevent sickness. Not only may the woman become pregnant by visiting the stone, but it is believed that by performing a very simple ceremony a malicious man may cause women and even children who are at a distance to become so. All that has to be done is for the man to go to the stone by himself, clear a space of ground around it, and the while rubbing it with the hands to mutter the words, ‘Arakutja wunka oknirra unta munja aritchika,’ which means, literally translated, ‘ Plenty of young women, you look and go quickly.’ If, again, a man wishes to punish his wife for supposed unfaithfulness, he may go to the stone and, rubbing it, mutter the words, ‘Arakutja tana yingalla iwupiwuma ertwa airpinna alimila munja ichkirakitcha,’ which means, ‘ That woman of mine has thrown me aside and gone with another man, go quickly and hang on tightly,’ meaning that the child is to remain a long time in the woman, and so cause her death. Or, again, if a man and his wife both wish for a child, the man ties his hair-girdle round the stone, rubs it, and mutters, ‘Arakutja thingunawa unta koanilla arapirima,’ which means, ‘ The woman, my wife, you [think] not good, look.’”- The word “Erathipa” which is applied to the stone means a child, although the term is seldom employed in this sense. The girdle, however, is not only a creator of children amongst them, it is also an accoucheur. Previous to the birth of the child in the Arunta tribe, the woman goes to the “Erlukwirra,” or woman’s camp. If there be any difficulty in the progress ■of labour, the husband, who is at his own camp, without saying anything strips off all his personal adornments, and empties his bag or wallet of knick-knacks on to the ground. Then a man who is “ Mura ” to him (that is, wife’s or husband’s 1 c.p. “ Customs in Scotland,” narrated by Rorie, “ Caledonian Medical Journal, 1911, vol. viii, p. 410. 2 B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, “Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London : Macmillan), 1899, pp. 336-8.