How the Present Came from the Past: The seeds in primitive lifeMacmillan, 1917 |
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animals Australian baboons bark beautiful Beeargah Berai-Berai black fellows bone Bootoolgah and Goonur borah boys bronze Bronze Age Bushman Byamee called camp cave home cave in France central Australia CHAPTER chimpanzee city on stilts clay cold cook corrobboree dancing dayoorls decorated drum earth elephant Eskimo Europe fairies fire firestick fish flowers forest Frodi girls grass grinding ground honey hunting incised Indians Italy Kaang kangaroo rat keep killed lake dwellers land learned lived looked Macmillan Meamei MESSAGE STICK native Old Stone Age painted Perhaps piles Pleiades pottery prehistoric primitive probably queer rain rattles reindeer rocks rubbish seven sisters shape shown in Figure Sicily sing sisters skin Speyer spirit sticks story tell terramara things thought to-day trees tribe warm Wirreenuns women wooden Wurrunnah
Popular passages
Page 131 - IN the days when Bootoolgah, the crane, married Goonur, the kangaroo rat, there was no fire in their country. They had to eat their food raw or just dry it in the sun. One day when Bootoolgah was rubbing two pieces of wood together, he saw a faint spark sent forth and then a slight smoke. "Look," he said to Goonur, "see what comes when I rub these pieces of wood together-smoke!
Page 104 - Kaang thinks himself clever.' 'Kaang was asleep at the time, but when he awoke he found out by his magic what had happened, so he went to the baboons. When they saw him coming they left off singing ' 'Kaang thinks himself clever,' and sang another song. But a little baboon girl said ' Don't sing it that way, sing the way you were singing before^ and 'Kaang said ' Sing as the little girl wishes,' So they sang and danced as before.
Page 130 - ... pine trees, bidding them not to be afraid but to come to them. Quickly the two girls climbed up when they heard the voices of their sisters. When they reached the tops of the pines the five sisters in the sky stretched forth their hands, and drew them in to live with them there in the sky for ever. And there, if you look, you may see the seven sisters together. You perhaps know them as the Pleiades, but the black fellows call them the Meamei. The Cookooburrahs and the Goolahgool GOOGARH, the...
Page 110 - ... myths. To the primitive man the shaft of light coming down from heaven was typical of the original descent of fire for the benefit and improvement of the human race. The Sioux Indians account for the origin of fire by a myth of unmistakable kinship ; they say that " their first ancestor obtained his fire from the sparks which a friendly panther struck from the rocks as he scampered up a stony hill.
Page 104 - ... and when they saw him coming close by, they changed their song so as to omit the words about Cagn, but a little baboon girl said, "Don't sing that way; sing the way you were singing before.
Page 135 - ... preparations. Each determined to outdo the other in the quaintness and brightness of their painting for the corrobboree. Each tribe as they arrived gained great applause; never before had the young people seen so much diversity in colouring and design. Beeleer, the Black Cockatoo tribe, came with bright splashes of orange-red on their black skins. The Pelicans came as a contrast, almost pure white, only a touch here and there of their black skin showing where the white paint had rubbed off. The...
Page 129 - ... earth, went the two girls. Hearing no chopping after the first hits, Wurrunnah came towards the pines to see what was keeping the girls so long. As he came near them he saw that the pine trees were growing taller even as he looked at them, and clinging to the trunks of the trees high in the air he saw his two wives. He called to them to come down, but they made no answer. Time after time he called to them as higher and higher they went, but still they made no answer. Steadily taller grew the...
Page 103 - Cagn sent Cogaz to cut sticks to make bows. When Cogaz came to the bush, the baboons (cogn) caught him. They called all the other baboons together to hear him, and they asked him who sent him there. He said his father sent him to cut sticks to make bows. So they said, "Your father thinks himself more clever than we are; he wants those bows to kill us, so we'll kill you...
Page 121 - ... forth to find a new people in a new country. After he had gone some distance, he saw, a long way off, an old man chopping out bees' nests. The old man turned his face towards Wurrunnah, and watched him coming, but when Wurrunnah came close to him he saw that the old man had no eyes, though he had seemed to be watching him long before he could have heard him. It frightened Wurrunnah to see a stranger having no eyes, yet turning his face towards him as if seeing him all the time. But he determined...
Page 107 - ... which she threw with all her force up to the sky. There it broke on a heap of firewood, which burst into flame as the yellow yolk spilt all over it, which flame lit up the world below, to the astonishment of every creature on it. They had only been used to the semidarkness, and were dazzled by such brightness. A good spirit who lived in the sky saw how bright and beautiful the earth looked when lit up by this blaze. He thought it would be a good thing to make a fire every day; which from that...