The Mayamah
: Australian Legendary TalesThe blacks had all left their camp and gone away to attend a borah.
Nothing was left in the camp but one very old dog, too old to travel.
After the blacks had been gone about three days, one night came their
enemies, the Gooeeays, intending to surprise them and kill them.
Painted in all the glory of their war-paint came the Gooeeays, their
hair tied in top-knots and ornamented with feathers and kangaroos'
strips, round their waists, were new and strong, holding firmly some of
their boomerangs and woggoorahs, which they had stuck through them.
But prepared as they were for conquest, they found only a deserted camp
containing naught but one old dog. They asked the old dog where the
blacks were gone. But he only shook his head. Again and again they
asked him, and again and again he only shook his head. At last some of
the black fellows raised their spears and their moorillahs or
nullah-nullahs, saying:
"If you do not tell us where the blacks are gone, we shall kill you."
Then spoke the old dog, saying only: "Gone to the borah."
And as he spoke every one of the Gooeeays and everything they had with
them was turned to stone. Even the waywahs round their waists, the
top-knots on their heads, and the spears in their hands, even these
turned to stone. And when the blacks returned to their camp long
afterwards, when the borah was over, and the boys, who had been made
young men, gone out into the bush to undergo their novitiate, each with
his solitary guardian, then saw the blacks, their enemies, the
Gooeeays, standing round their old camp, as if to attack it. But
instead of being men of flesh, they were men of stone--they, their
weapons, their waywahs, and all that belonged to them, stone.
And at that place are to be found stones or mayamahs of great beauty,
striped and marked and coloured as were the men painted.
And the place of the mayamah is on one of the mounts near Beemery.
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