THE BUNYIP.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7268, 26 March 1889, Page 6

THE BUNYIP.

Everyone who haa lived in Australia has heard of the Bunyip. It is the one re. spectable flesh-curdling horror of which Australia can boast. The old world has her tales of ghoul and vampire, of Lorelei, spook, and pixie, but Australia has nothing but her Bunyip. There never were any fauns in the eucalyptus forests, nor any naiad- In the running creeks. tiO mythological hero left behind him stories of wonder and enchantment. No white man's hand has carved records of a poetic past on the grey, volcanic-looking boulders that overshadow some lonely gullies. There are no sepulchres hewn in the mountain rampart surrounding a certain dried-up lake—probably "the crater of an extinct volcano—and which in truth suggests possibilities of a forgotten city of Kfir. Nature and civilisation have been very niggard here in all that makes romance.

No Australian traveller. ever saw the Bunyip with his own eyes; and though there are many stockman's yarns and black's potters, which have to do with this wonderful monster, they have all the hazy uncertainty which usually envelope information of the legendary kihd. Some night, perhaps, when you are sitting over a camp-fire, brewing quart-pot tea/and smoking store-tobacco, with the spectral white gums rising like an army of ghosts around you, and the horses' hobbles clanking cheerfully in the distance, you will ask one of the overlanding .hands to tell you what he knows about the Bunyip. The bushman will warm to his subject as as readily as an Irishman will warm to his banshee. He will indignantly repel your insinuation that the Bunyip may be, after all, as mythical as Alice's Jabberwock 5 and he will forthwith proceed to relate how a friend of his had a mate, who knew another chap, who had once in his life had a narrow escape from the Bunyip and had actually beheld it. He himself has never set eyes upon a Bunyip, nor has his mate, but there is not the smalles doubt that the other chap has seen itWhen facts come to be boiled down, how* ever, "the other chap's" statements wilj seem curiously vague and contradictory, and, if the details are to be accepted as they stand, a remarkable contribution to atural history must be the result. The Bunyip is the Australian sea. serpent, only it differs from that much, disputed fact or fiction in that it does not inhabit the ocean, but makes its home in lagoons and still, deep water-holes. For rivers and running creeks it appears to have an aversion. No black fellow will object to bathe in a river because of the Bunyip, but he will 'shake his woolly head mysteriously over many an innocent, looking water-hole, and decline to dive for water-lily roots, or some such, delicacy dear to the aboriginal stomach, on the plea that "Debil-debil sit down there." Debil-debil and Bunyip are synonymous terms with the black fellow while he is on the bank of a lagoon, though "Debildebil " in the abstract represents a much more indefinite source of danger, and has a far wider scope of action than most mythological deities. '' Debil-debil" is a convenient way of accounting, not only for plague, sickness, and disaster, but also for peace, plenty, 'and good fortune. According to' the religious code of the Australian aboriginal, Ormuzd and Ahriman do not work at opposite poles, but combine and concentrat e themselves under one symbol. The supremacy of Debil-debil is uncontested, and he deals out promiscuously benefits and calamities from the same hand. A medicine-man, professing to be in confidential communication with Debil-debil, may kill or cure a black fellow according to his pleasure. The natives have -.-superstition, in common with many primitive nations, that if an enemy possesses him. self of a lock of hah. from the head of one to whom he wishes lU, and buries it in the ground beneath a gum tree, the despoiled person will sicken and die as the hair rots away. In that case, Debil-debil must be "pialla-ed" (entreated) by the sick person to unbury the hair and cast it into the fire, when the charm will be dissolved. The medicine-man, therefore, has but to assure his patient that Debil-debil has refused or acceded to his request, and death or speedy recovery will.be the consequence. The blacks have an Impish drollery and love of mischief, and they delight iv impos. ins; on the credulity of their white auditors. Thus the stories of their superstition must not be accepted too literally. But it is certain that when they show a distinct reticence in regard to any reputed article of faith, it may safely be looked upon as genuine. The blacks never wjll volunteer information about the Bunyip; it has always to be dragged out of them. When a black disappears, it is generally understood that the Bunyip has got hold of him. and the particular water-hole in which, the monster is supposed to live becomes more than ever an object of terror and a place to be avoided. The water-hole may have hitherto been uncondemned by tradition, and the blacks may choose t° disport themselves in it; but if one of them, seized with cramp or. enmeshed in weeds, sinks to rise no more, the terrible cry of "Bunyip" goes forth, and those waters are from henceforth shunned.

The Bunyip is said to be an amphibious animal, and is variously described—sometimes as a gigantic snake; sometimes as a species of rhinoceros,' with a smooth pulpy skin and. a head like that of a calf; sometimes as a huge pig, its body yellow crossed with black stripes. But it is also said to be something more than animal, and among its supernatural attributes are the cold, awesome uncanny feeling which creeps over a company at night when the Bunyip becomes the subject of conversation ; and a certain magnetic atmosphere supposed tp envelop the creature and to spread a deadly influence for some space around, rendering even its vicinity dangerous, is particularly dwelt upon. According to legend, it attracts its prey by means of this mysterious emanation, and when sufficiently near, will draw man or beast down to the water, and suck the %__dy * r under, and without sound or straggle the victim disappears, to be seen no more. It is silent and stealthy, and only very rarely, they say, and always at night, has been seen to rise partially from the black water, which it loves, and utter a strange moaning cry like that of a child or a woman in pain. There is a theory that water is a powerful conductor for the kind of electricity it gives out, and that a pool with dry, abrupt banks, and no outlying morass, is tolerably safe to drink from, or to camp by; but a lagoon lying amid swamps has always an evil reputation, and in some districts It is very difficult to persuade a black fellow to venture into such a place.

The following story was told by an old chief to mc when I was in Australia, regarding the Bunyip: "Long ago two brothers —one of them so tall that h e looked down on everybody, and the other of ordinary size—went to a swamp to get swanß' eggs. They found a great many; and, while roasting some of them on the bank of the lagoon, the smaller of the brothers said that he must get some mot from the swamp. The taller one forbade him to go alone. However, he did go. He found a nest in the middle of the lagoon and took the eggs. : When returning to the shore, he" heard a rush of water behiodhira, and. saw the water-fqwls in frorit of him hurrying along the water as If frightened. At the same time the bottom of the marsh became so soft that he stuck in the mud, and could not go forward. A great wave overtook him and carried him back to the nest, where a large BunyiP caught him in its mouth. It held him so high that his brother saw him. Some hours afterwards the.water became calm- The tall brother then took a sheet of bark and put a fire on it, and, approaching the nest, saw his brother in the mouth of the Bunyip

Speaking to the Bunyip, he said- "_ quiet, and let mc take my brother " 1% Bunyip gnashed its teeth and gave hh! up; but he was dead, and his entrails h__ been devoured. The brother took the bod ashore and laid it near the fire, and wm He then went for his friends, who . __,' and carried the corpse to their ____ c After he had watched it for two ov) 0 ' the relatives put in a tree for one n___ B and then burned it, with the exception . the leg and arm bones, which were ___? to the friends of the deceased." «"«_ The first white man who made hla _ pearance at Port Fairy (a locality nam _ after a small vessel called the Falryf w considered by the aborigines to be a ___» natural being; and as he was di_cov«__. in the act of smoking a pipe, they said th* he must be made of Are, for t_ey_i smoke coming out of his mouth. A. T. 8.