806
NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA
Kuyi-mokuna,[1] and leaving there, he came to Wokadani, where the female Mura-mura Wari-lin-luna[2] came forth out of the earth and gave birth to her many children, the various Murdus, who ran away to different districts and settled themselves there.
At Ngapadia[3] the favourable wind which had led him homewards ceased to blow, and he moved himself round and round, smelling the wind, and stretching out his neck, thus forming a wide shallow depression, and also the creek leading to Kapara-mana.[4] The south wind now blew from his home; and as he went onwards, the movements of his tail formed the curves of the creek, at the same time drawing the flood-waters after him. He passed by Mandikilla-widmani,[5] where the Mura-mura Darana caused the rain by the songs of his friend the Mura-mura Wonna-mara. Finally Ngura-wordu-punnuna came to Yulku-kudana,[6] where he stretched out his neck to look round for his camp at Pando, where he had left his wife, who was also a Kadimarkara. Then hastening to it, he sank deeper and deeper into the ground.
- ↑ As to Kuyi-mokuna, see "Some Native Legends from Central Australia," Mary E. B. Howitt. Folk-Lore, vol. xiii. p. 403.
- ↑ This is a version of the first legend of this series, and is an equivalent of that of the Alcheringa ancestors giving birth to spirit children.
- ↑ At Ngapadia a channel leads off from the main channel to Pando (Lake Hope).
- ↑ This place is shown on the maps as Kopperamana.
- ↑ From Mandikilla, in Dieri meaning "waves," and Widmani, "to put into." So called because the Mura-mura is supposed to have stopped the flood by putting the waters into the ground.
- ↑ Yulku-kudana is letting the throat become lower, or fall down. While Yerkala is in Dieri the neck, yulku is specially the lower part of the throat; the word means also "to swallow."