ut he was unsuccessful beyond dulling
their brightness, for the ice as it melted put out the fire. The two
ice-maidens were miserable on earth with him, and eventually escaped by
the aid of one of their 'multiplex totems,' the pine-tree. Wurrunnah
had told them to get him pine bark. Now the Meamei--Pleiades--belong to
the Beewee totem, so does the pine-tree. They chopped the pine bark,
and as they did so the tree telescoped itself to the sky where the
five other Meamei were, whom they now joined, and with whom they have
remained ever since. But they who were polluted by their enforced
residence with the earth-man never shone again with the brightness of
their sisters. This legend was told emphasising the beauty of chastity.

Men had desired all the sisters when once they travelled on earth, but
they kept themselves unspotted from the world, with the exception of
the two Wurrunnah captured by stratagem.

Orion's Sword and Belt are the Berai-Berai--the boys--who best of all
loved the Meamei, for whom they used to hunt, bringing their offerings
to them; but the ice-maidens were obdurate and cold, disdaining lovers,
as might be expected from their parentage. Their father was a rocky
mountain, their mother an icy mountain stream. But when they were
translated to the sky the Berai-Berai were inconsolable. They would not
hunt, they would not eat, they pined away and died. The spirits pitied
them and placed them in the sky within sound of the singing of the
Meamei, and there they are happy. By day they hunt, and at night light
their corroboree fires, and dance to the singing in the distance. Just
to remind the earth-people of them, the Meamei drop down some ice in
the winter, and they it is who make the winter thunderstorms.

Castor and Pollux, in some tribes, are two hunters of long ago.

Canopus is Womba, the Mad Star, the wonderful Weedah of long ago, who,
on losing his loves, went mad, and was sent to the sky that they might
not reach him; but they followed, and are travelling after him to this
day, and after them the wizard Beereeun, their evil genius, who made
the mirage on the plains in order to deceive them, that they and Weedah
might be lured on by it and perish of thirst.

When they escaped him Beereeun threw a barbed spear into the sky, and
hooked one spear on to another until he made a ladder up which he
climbed after them; and across the sky he is still pursuing them.

The Clouds of Magellan are the Bralgah, o