Ixxi
Mrs Malone remembers when a little child, hearing the women in the camp say to disobedient children, to deter them from being naughty, Mirrirul wirrin minin Mirrirul will not allow it.
Dreaming - A Vision of Death
{The following story was recorded by Reverend William Ridley (1878, p.266) from Lizzy Malone, daughter of a Shoalhaven Aborigine)
Mrs Malone’s aunt, her mother’s sister, a pure Aboriginal, was once in a trance for three days. At the end of that time her brother or husband (Mrs Malone’s uncle) let off a gun; on which she awoke out of the trance. She then told them she had seen a long path, with fire on both sides of it. At the end of this path stood her father and mother, waiting for her. As she went on, they said to her, "Mary Ann, what brought you here?" she said "I don’t know, I was dead." Her mother said to her, "you go back." She saw it all quite plain.
Stories of the Burragorang Tribe
{The following stories were recorded by M.Feld (1900) respecting the Aborigines of the Burragorang Valley)
They believed that Guba lived among the mountains. He is supposed to be a wild, hairy man, with feet turned backwards, and to have a tail about thirty feet long, by which he would hang to the highest tree, in readiness to seize any of the Aborigines as they passed. They had another superstition about a spirit they called Dthuwan-gong, who lived among the rocks, and had enormous wings, with which he extinguished their camp fires, killed them and then eat their livers. These two were supposed to be Yuam-bir’s (the real devil’s) scouts. The tradition about Yuam-bir is that they killed him two hundred years ago, that is many generations ago, at Tambaroora (which they call Dthambur-war-ing). They fought him there for two days, and smashed him into the ground with nulla nullas, so there is now no devil or hell (place of punishment after death) for their dead. Their only dread is the devil’s scouts, as above mentioned. Their god, whom they called Bull-an, lived across the sea, in the Aborigines’ heaven. After death their spirits cross the sea, and on arrival at the other side they find a bridge, which they cross, and then dive down through a tunnel, at the end of which is a fiery mountain. They pass over this and