een
boondee, or waddy, with which he tapped people on the backs of their
necks: result, heat apoplexy. A few years ago, an old black fellow laid
wait for him and 'flattened him out,' since which there has been no
heat apoplexy. We think it is because the bad times have made people
too poor to overheat themselves with bad spirits of a liquid kind. The
blacks differ, and certainly there were some cases of even total
abstainers falling victims to the heat wave.

Hatefully frequent devil visitors are those who animate the boolees, or
whirlwinds. If these whirl near the house they smother everything with
debris and dust.

The Black-but-Comelys say, as they clear the dirt away: 'I wish whoever
in this house those boolees are after would go out when they come, not
let 'em hunt after 'em here and make this mess.'

The Wurrawilberos chiefly animate these. But sometimes the wirreenuns
use whirlwinds as mediums of transit for their Mullee Mullees, or dream
spirits, sent in pursuit of some enemy, to capture a woman, or
incarnate child spirit; women dread boolees, more even than men, on
this account. Great wirreenuns are said to get rid of evil spirits by
eating the form in which they appear. I'm sure we all swallowed a good
share of the dust devils, but still they came; evidently we were not
wizards or witches.

The plain of Weawarra is haunted. Once long ago there was a fight
there. Two young warriors but lately married were slain. As their
bodies were never recovered, they were supposed to have been stolen and
eaten by the enemy. Their young widows spent days searching for them,
after the tribe had given up hope of finding them. At last the
widows--who had refused to marry again, declaring their husbands yet
lived, and that one day they would find them--disappeared.

Time passed; they did not return, so were supposed to be dead too. Then
arose the rumour that their ghosts had been seen, and to this day it is
said the plain of Weawarra is haunted by them.

Should men camp there at night, these women spirits silently steal into
the camp. The men, thinking they are women from some tribe they do not
know, speak to them; but silently there they sit, making no answer, and
vanish again before the dawn of day, to renew their search night after
night.

The high ridges above Warrangilla are haunted by two women, who
tradition says were buried alive. Their spirits have never rested, but
come out at all times from the huge fissure i