Magic in names and in other things / by Edward Clodd.

  • Edward Clodd
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Magic in names and in other things / by Edward Clodd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    says that the Tasmanians showed great dislike to their names being mentioned. Mr. Brough Smyth says that the Victoria black-fellows are very unwilling to tell their real names, and that this reluctance is due to the fear of putting themselves at the mercy of sorcerers. The same authority tells this story. A fever-stricken Aus¬ tralian native girl told the doctor who attended her that, some moons back, when the Goulburn blacks were encamped at Melbourne, a young man named Gibberook came behind her and cut off a lock of her hair, and that she was sure he had buried it and that it was rotting some¬ where. Her marm-bu-la (kidney fat) was wasting away, and when the stolen hair had completely rotted she would die. She added that her name had been lately cut on a tree by some wild black and that was another sign of death. Her name was Murran, which means “ a leaf,” and the doctor afterwards found that the figure of leaves had been carved on a gum tree as described by the girl. The sorceress said that the spirit of a black-fellow had cut the figure on the tree.1 When a party enters the wood with the Nganga (doctor) attached to the service of the fetishes Zinkiei Mbowu (nail fetishes into which nails are driven) for the purpose of cutting the Muamba tree, to make a fetish, it is forbidden for anyone 1 Aborigines of Victoria, Vol. I. p. 469.
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