[In the following essay, Berndt and Berndt identify and analyze a number of myth-narratives and songs from the Aboriginal oral tradition.]

For the great majority of Australians, the most authentically Australian literature is virtually a closed book. One reason is that it is an oral literature. To some people this expression is still a contradiction in terms. However, since the Chadwicks' work on Oral Literature justified and legitimized it, in the absence of any satisfactory alternative it is now respectably established and generally accepted.

The Australian Aborigines had no tradition of writing, or keeping written documents. They depended on an oral (and aural) tradition: on word-of-mouth (and word-of-ear) transmission. This was a mode of communication suited to a small-scale type of society with its own conventional arrangements for drawing on and using and representing the past. It did not accord nearly so well with the outlook and values of the invading Europeans, who sought something more tangible, less elusive than what they found among the Aborigines. This was a conquest situation and, despite the ineffectual overtones of welfare and humanitarian ideals in some official quarters, it was a notoriously unhappy one. Communication failures were almost endemic. In such circumstances there was little room for aesthetic appreciation, or exchange of ideas on the subject of literature and the arts. From documents and from the testimony of oral history, the assumption seems to have been that Aborigines had nothing in that sphere worth considering, let alone discussing with them—even had Europeans taken the trouble to learn the rudiments of an Aboriginal language, as most of them did not.

1 MEANING AND COMMUNICATION

‘Aborigines,’ spelt with a capital A, is now a specific name for a people who had no overall Australia-wide name for themselves. There was no overarching political unity, and no recognition of common identity. They were not geared to large-scale warfare, and land was not a commodity to be seized or fought over. They were doubly disadvantaged therefore, in the face of the European invasion. They were not equipped to cope with this new turn of events; and Europeans did not understand, or want to understand, the non-centralized socio-political structure that appears to have served the Aborigines so well in a normal, pre-conquest setting.

That traditional situation was much more complex than most of the early European settlers realized, and even today few non-Aborigines appreciate. Aborigines are still referred to as ‘a simple people,’ or even as ‘primitive,’ a derogatory word which should be scrupulously avoided in speaking or writing about them. There is a communication dilemma here. Presenting a simplified statement about Aboriginal social structure(s), for instance, can actually have the effect of reinforcing such attitudes. In an overview such as this, however, there is no satisfactory alternative. Despite the numerous similarities between Aboriginal cultures, diversities were quite marked. Even a summary of the main features in each would be a rather lengthy exercise.

One way of looking at it is to see it as an Australia-wide spread of overlapping concentric circles; or as a spread of overlapping networks, each with a closer mesh at its centre, a looser mesh toward its peripheries. Local names, local identification, attachment to particular territories, were crucial; but so were outward-oriented perspectives, through trade and through religious linkages. Most Aborigines were bilingual or tri-lingual, speaking and understanding at least one language or dialect besides their mother tongue, or ‘father tongue.’

Along with differences in language went differences in other aspects of culture. The Aborigines were semi-nomadic. In their normal hunting and gathering activities they kept within the stretch of country over which they had rights of use, focusing on the country in which they had ownership rights. For religious gatherings and other ritual purposes, or in times of severe drought, they moved a little farther afield—again, within a recognized range. Problems of inter-Aboriginal communication on a larger scale did not arise, because centrifugal perspectives were contained within these traditionally accepted limits. The emphasis was on the strangeness, the alien quality of whatever lay beyond those limits. From an ‘outside’ standpoint, now, we can identify a large number of similarities between quite distant Aboriginal communities, in language as well as in other features. From ‘inside’ standpoints, this would have been not only unthinkable but irrelevant. Their myths and stories, songs and traditions generally asserted their own unique and special identity, as against all others. Only in recent years, with the development of pan-Aboriginality and the sense of a national Aboriginal identity, has this picture been changing.

Communication problems between Aborigines and outsiders have not been easy to overcome even with the best of intentions on both sides. Accounts by earlier writers of myth and story material make this plain.¹ Until recently, few reliable translations and even fewer vernacular accounts were available. To date, the most notable exception in an otherwise somewhat depressing picture² has been T. G. H. Strehlow's magnificent Songs of Central Australia (Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1971).

Oral literature in Aboriginal Australia is one item within the broader complex of the arts: songs (no poetry as such, but song-poetry), dance, drama, and material, visible manifestations and artefacts. Traditionally, it was an intrinsic part of its socio-cultural context: a source of practical as well as of more specialized information, a guide to rules and ideals and to the varied everyday necessities of life, and a source of entertainment and relaxation, providing leisure-time diversions and scope for individual expression. In the sphere of religion, it was a vehicle for the most sacred statements encapsulated in myth—myth in the positive, anthropological sense of believed-in truths, not in the sense of ‘false belief.’

2 AN AREA OF SONG-POETRY

Northeastern Arnhem Land is often referred to in accounts of verbal and visual and other arts in Aboriginal Australia. After a long period of early contact along the coast, Arnhem Land became an Aboriginal Reserve in 1931. That did not halt contacts with the outside world, but it limited them to some extent. The Methodist Overseas Mission (now the Uniting Church of North Australia), whose settlements represented the only permanent European intrusion into this area, had a stated policy of keeping the local language, and encouraging what was ‘best’ in the local culture. Arnhem Land was the scene of anthropological research at a time when the people were still traditionally oriented, and the impact of outsiders was far less apparent than it is now when large-scale mining is only one of the forces of escalating disruption. W. L. Warner (1926-1929) at Milingimbi recorded some interesting story and song material. We ourselves first began to work in that region in 1946-1947, mainly at Yirrkalla and briefly at Elcho Island, after meeting individual people from Milingimbi and south-central Arnhem Land in the wartime Army settlements. In recent years more anthropologists and linguists have ‘discovered’ Arnhem Land as one of the last strongholds of what still remains of traditional Aboriginal culture. Add to that the growing number of Aborigines who speak and understand English and—especially younger people with formal schooling, some up to teacher-training level—have reading and writing skills, and want to say something about their own culture. All told, more information, published and otherwise, has been accumulating on the region than on most others.

The sheer volume of song and story material from the region is still impressive, even though many aspects of it have been lost—including detailed meanings and cross-linkages. The northeastern Arnhem Landers have a tradition of sustaining and developing verbal skills and verbal imagery as part of their overall concern with the arts in general. The images are used quite skillfully, like a ‘vocabulary of images’ available to everyone, to be deployed in appropriate contexts. Songs are one field in which this vocabulary is highly significant—not scattered randomly, but arranged in conventionally structured patterns. Our volume, The Barbarians (Penguin/Pelican Books, London, 1973; pp. 51-55) outlines some of the imagery and the relevant social frame within which it is organized.

3 THE SPHERE OF THE SACRED

Virtually every part of the Australian continent, including its outlying islands, was owned, occupied or used by Aborigines, and was linked with myths of greater or lesser importance. The major myth-characters created people and other living things, are commemorated in the most sacred ritual activities, arranged the local social and natural environment, and laid down the most important rules of affiliation and behaviour. Traditionally there were many thousands of major and minor figures, each with his or her own story, or stories; each focused on one or more sites, but most moved over varying distances, in a vast intermeshing of tracks (and stories). Many were shape-changing, exemplifying the view that all human and other creatures share the same life-essence. Myths traditionally located and identified people in time and space, accounting for their past, present and future: where human beings came from, the relation between body and soul (spirit), and the god-given bond between people and land. In their reflection of everyday living, they pose questions and problems without necessarily spelling out answers. Where they were framed as straightforward stories with plot and dramatic climax, they had overtones of entertainment, and introduced children to material they would learn more about as they became adults.

If a storyline takes precedence over other aspects, it is likely to be less sacred. Conversely, if a narrative or song-sequence lingers around place names or unfolds slowly through a series of interlinking episodes or dramatic events, it is likely to be more sacred. A narrative account with more prosaic references may contrast with a sung version which takes up other aspects of the theme, perhaps quite cryptically. (See, for example, Strehlow's discussion of Aranda myths and songs.)³ However, some narratives are interspersed with songs.

Myths may have unequivocal meanings with a direct bearing on everyday affairs while at other levels they are symbolic statements of varying complexity. They range from open, public statements of content and implications to closed, esoteric statements. This partly coincides with the widespread Aboriginal division of labour in religious and in economic affairs on an age-and-sex basis, where fully initiated, usually older men had the principal executive responsibility of organizing and overseeing the most complicated religious rituals. Some writers, impressed by this division, have used the term ‘sacred’ only for men-only religious matters. A more useful distinction contrasts secret-sacred with open-sacred or public-sacred. In this overview we avoid all secret-sacred material, even though that includes the most detailed and intricate symbolism and imagery. Such a discussion belongs within the field of religion, and only marginally within the field of oral literature as such.

TWO SISTER-PAIRS IN NORTHEASTERN ARNHEM LAND

Two important mythical sisters in this region have become well known through being represented in bark paintings and other media available to a wider Australian public.

The Djanggau (Djanggawul) sisters, Daughters of the Sun, in some versions with a brother, paddled their bark canoe from the island of Bralgu, the dua moiety land of the dead in the Gulf of Carpentaria, on the path of the rising sun. They brought, among other things, a conical plaited mat, a uterus-symbol, and parakeet-feathers, symbolizing (among other things) the sun's rays. On the mainland they made people and fresh-water springs and wells and trees, and ritual and more mundane rules for the specific groups who were to live in and care for specific, named territories. The sisters, the principal creators, dominated the scene until men stole from them their control over the most sacred and secret objects, rites and songs. They travelled westward into the sunset, and so out of this region.

Even more famous outside their home area is another dual moiety sister-pair, the Wawalag or Wagilag, who came north from the direction of the Roper River toward the north-central Arnhem Land coast.

With their child(ren), they camped near the waterhole of the great python, Yulunggul. Blood (afterbirth, menstrual, or both) fell into the waterhole. Yulunggul sent a great storm and wrapped himself around their hut, preparing to swallow them. In turn, they danced and sang, trying in vain to keep him and the storm at bay. He swallowed and then vomited them and the child(ren), swallowed the two sisters again, and finally returned to the waterhole with both inside him.

Each of these accounts is told in prose, in song, and in prose interspersed with songs; but the Djanggau in particular are just as often simply referred to in connection with specific sites, or in response to such questions as ‘Who started this practice?’ or, ‘Why do you follow that rule?’ Both myth-complexes exist in closed, esoteric versions, and in ordinary open-sacred versions that are long, detailed, symbolically sophisticated, and poetically told and sung. Both have religious ritual counterparts, and both have implications for human and natural fertility; thus, the Wawalag storm ‘is’ the northwest monsoon.

Each of these myth-complexes is sometimes regarded by outsiders as a separate entity—‘a story,’ to be understood as a story. For local Aborigines, it is a story seen against their own background of knowledge, and linked with other myths (and rituals). The Djanggau myth is more significant on the northeastern side. The Wawalag has ritual connections with the kunapipi that has spread inland and westward as well as to the northeast. Also it partly resembles many western Arnhem Land stories where the Rainbow Snake (a storm and rain symbol) swallows people who disturb or annoy her (him), and then vomits their bones; these turn to stone, accounting for the numerous rock formations in that region. The story and songs of the Honey Man, Wudal or Wial, in northeastern Arnhem Land, also has Wawalag links. All of these, and others, need to be seen in conjunction, as strands in the fabric of oral literatures and of living in that region.

AN EXCERPT FROM A WESTERN DESERT MYTH-COMPLEX

In the opening episode of this part of the story, Djilbi Gandju (‘Old-man’ Gandju), is camping north-west of the Warburton Range with the ‘Frost-in-the-morning’ people.

They go hunting, without him. (The reason is given in another story.) He covers up their camp fires, keeping one firestick for himself, and goes away. The hunters return and try to make fire, but it always goes out. They can't find Gandju, either. They huddle together to keep warm, but die of cold: hence their name. Their physical remains are visible today at Gabi Njibin (Njibin waterhole), as a heap of granite stones.

In the next episode two men, brothers-in-law, Walbada (Wallaby) and Bundara (a small grey-furred marsupial), follow Gandju northward. They see the light of his firestick torch by night, its smoke by day. Gandju, at Gabi Norildani ('Snoring’ waterhole), stands his firestick upright in the ground and goes to sleep. The two men, creeping up in the darkness, hear him snoring. (The sound can still be heard there: it is ‘rock snoring.’) They can't pull the torch out of the ground. Then Bundara succeeds, and they run off with it, heading westward. Gandju wakes up feeling cold and sees no firestick. Some coals have fallen from it, and with them he lights some spinifex clumps. They flare up and the fire spreads rapidly. It follows the two men's tracks, burning a narrow path through the scrub, now a deep creek-bed. Gandju ‘sings’ the fire, telling it to burn them up.

Gandju follows the track of the fire, making marks on the ground with his stick. These are still visible. Catching up with the fire, he enters it. He is Gandju-gingin-gordi (gingin, a ‘native doctor’ or ‘clever man’; ‘gordi,’ a spirit). He is Fire now, a fire-spirit. The two men see him approaching, a huge column of smoke and flames. They dig two holes to escape him. Walbada's is an ordinary hole—useless: the fire could easily get into it. Bundara's is good, with a passage leading from the main shaft. Both men hide there, with the stolen firestick. Fire passes over them, burning all the surrounding scrub. He can't see them or smell them; he stops, wanders around looking for them, and then dies down. The creek-bed peters out here.

The two men remain in the hole until the wind has blown away all the coals and hot ashes, leaving blackened stumps. Then they travel eastward into their own country at Gabi Bunumlang. They look back; Fire is following them again. They dig holes, Fire passes over them, then dies down (i.e., the creek-bed reappears, then peters out). They emerge, hunt for meat, and go on to Babal.

Fire comes after them again. They dig a hole, crawl inside, and Fire goes over it, burning everything nearby. Rain comes and cools the ground. They emerge. The rain erases their tracks. All the country has been devastated by Fire, but they catch some food. They use their firestick to light a fire. They eat, make camp, and sleep. Bundara dreams that Fire is burning them up.

They see a gubigubi willy-willy (whirlwind) approaching, and then others coming from every direction! They cover themselves with green bushes and hold bunches of leaves, but these are not enough to save them. The willy-willies have become fires. They can't beat out the flames. Fire surrounds them, roaring. It swoops over them, burning them up. ‘This happened at Babal. Two large rocks there are those two men, surrounded by sand. The country is quite bare there, where all the trees were burnt off in the Dreaming era.’

(The story continues with another sequence of episodes. …)

The initial contrast is between cold (frost, ice) and heat (fire). The sequence opens with death from the first, and ends with death from the second. Fire appears in several aspects. Lack of fire and excess of it are demonstrated to be potentially lethal. The medium of ‘just enough’ fire, sufficiently precious to be a cause of conflict, is a firestick, a vital piece of equipment used to produce just enough fire for cooking, warmth and light, and controlled by scrub-burning for hunting purposes. Under human control, it is a vital domestic necessity. Out of human control and under its own (i.e., under the fire-spirit's control), as a weapon of offence, it is a destructive force—linking with the notion of sorcery and the use of ‘natural’ agents by human beings to achieve revenge. Sorcery is a theme in many stories that deal graphically with such ‘causes’ as vengeance for a death or for a real or imagined injury, jealousy, unrequited affection and the like. The bitter cold of an inland winter morning in open country, and the searing heat of a bush fire in conjunction with scorching sunshine in summer, are realities of Desert living. Accordingly, the myth includes a piece of practical advice on how to avoid being burnt: the two men survive when they shelter in the right kind of underground hole, die when they take inadequate precautions and rely on fresh foliage.

What these episodes don't reveal is the reason for the hostility-to-the-death between the two sets of characters. Many myths and stories, if looked at singly, are incomplete or leave salient questions unanswered. The spatial spread of mythical tracks in this ‘segmentary’ religious system means that ownership of a complete constellation is divided among a number of groups associated with adjacent sites and territories. It is like a vast jigsaw puzzle; various groups own interlocking sections of the entire set and, over a certain spatial range, combine in the ritual sequences connected with appropriate parts of it.

THE DIERI MYTH OF THE MURA-MURA DARANA

Darana was one of the most famous rain-making Mura-mura in the Lake Hope area. This version of his story comes from A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-east Australia (Macmillan, London, 1904: pp. 798-800). Mura-mura are the great Dreaming beings of the Dieri people.

No rain had fallen for a long time. The land was desert and waste. Darana sang continually, looking toward the north. [The great rains come from the north.] Rain fell. The water rose steadily, to his knees, to his hips, to his neck. Wading to the source of the river, he fixed his Kandri [‘a ceremonial club’; ‘a round boomerang-shaped weapon, with pointed ends’] in the ground. The rain stopped. ‘The vegetation grew luxuriantly, and the Muluru [witchetty grubs] settled themselves in it in enormous numbers.’ Darana ‘drove them together by songs, dried them, and packed them in bags, and hung these on the trees.’ Invited to visit one of the other Mura-mura, he set off ‘with all his following,’ including ‘a number of cripples, who travelled along on their knees, elbows, and ankles.’ Two youths, the Dara-ulu, remained behind. Seeing the bundles hanging on trees, they threw boomerangs at them. ‘Dust from the dried Muluru flew far and wide, and obscured the sun, while the bags shone brightly to a great distance. The Mura-mura, seeing this as they travelled, turned back in haste, those with feet running on the surface, while those without travelled underground. Arriving at their home, they strangled the Dara-ulu, who were at once restored to life by the old Muramura Darana, to be again strangled by the unanimous decision of the people. Their bones were then rolled up, and it was decided that the first child born should be the guardian of the Dara.’ The Dara-ulu are (were) represented by the two stones treasured by the Dieri. If these were scratched, that ‘would, they say, cause the whole people to suffer perpetual hunger, and never to be satisfied, however much they might eat. If these stones were broken, the dust which formerly rose up from the dried Muluru would spread itself from the westward, and men, when they saw it cover the whole earth, would die of terror.’ The Dara-ulu are also ‘believed to be the senders of rain,’ and the long Dara song is associated with this rite.

A similar version was told (to R. M. Berndt) in 1942 by a Dieri man who said he first learnt it as a young fellow within the oral tradition of the few surviving Dieri people.⁴

The issue of rain versus drought is critical in the region formerly occupied by the Dieri. The spectacular transition from virtual desert and dry or salt water-courses to flood and abundant plant growth is typical of Lake Eyre and its surroundings. Because of the danger of flood-damage, Darana's imputed ability to stop the rain was as significant as his ability to provide it. The significance of rain for renewing food supplies focuses on a concentrated nourishment resource, witchetty grubs. Note the deliberate drying of these grubs, as a type of food-preservation; but they are mysteriously associated, indirectly, with insatiable hunger and with a dust storm of unprecedented magnitude. Another intriguing point is the presence of cripples; some mythical characters in the Western Desert are crippled, but the reason given there is continuing drought and heat, or that a few are blind. The relationship between Darana and the Dara-ulu is not explained. They defy his authority (damaging the bags); when he tries to restore them to life, the other Mura-mura reject his right (his authority) to do so. When the story begins, Darana is solely responsible for producing rain; when it ends, the Daraulu are. Howitt does not suggest they are Darana's sons, but other evidence does. This story is only a small segment of the interconnecting adventures and ritually relevant sequences of the Mura-mura. The Dieri people would not have seen any of these in isolation; and if we are concerned with analysis and with meaning, we should not do so either.

4 GOOD AND BAD: REFLECTION AND EXAMPLE

Myths and stories have to use the ingredients available to them in their socio-cultural setting—the language, the assumptions, the environment, and all that goes on among its human and other inhabitants. So, they reflect their environment in a general way. But the issue is always more specifically phrased: what kind of reflection, how much, and what? Myth is never an exact mirror-image of the live situation. All of the questions that are applicable to literature anywhere, as well as to products of the ‘mass’ media, in regard to reflection and example and likely effects, are relevant here too. Traditional Aboriginal societies were small in scale, relatively isolated with open-living arrangements and personally identifiable populations. But even there it was not possible to single out simple cause-and-effect relationships between stories, songs, drama and other such material on one hand, and behavioural responses on the other.

Unspoken assumptions were always an inherent part of a myth or story or song or acted-out drama. And in ordinary story-telling there was provision for audience-intervention, for questions or comments, which might be elaborated in discussion afterwards or brought up again on other appropriate occasions. A story or a myth was an on-going event, its meanings and linkages continuously asserted and ratified. ‘Mythic beings were both good and bad, and badness was a necessary corollary of goodness’; ‘It is … as if an immoral act must occur in order to demonstrate what can be categorized as being moral’; but myth and story reflect ‘the total life situation, in which … there is both good and bad … [as] part of the inevitable and irreversible framework of existence.’⁵

A ‘PLAY STORY’ FROM NORTHEASTERN ARNHEM LAND

To illustrate some of these points, here is a narrative that was told as a story, intended mainly for children but expected to interest adults too. Northeastern Arnhem Landers have a traditional category of narratives that are stories in a straightforward sense. In this example, about a girl taken by a crocodile, the story-line comes through without much elaboration and detail; there are virtually no ritual ramifications and no songs, and symbolic allusions are minimal. This version was told at Milingimbi (north-central Arnhem Land coast) in 1950, by an elderly woman, locally one of the most knowledgeable on traditional matters. Her audience was a small group of women and children, including C. H. Berndt, for whose benefit she framed the story partly in the Gobubingu dialect. (Her daughter had taught Gobubingu to C. H. B. at Yirrkalla in 1946-47.) The translation is fairly general, especially in the opening sentences, where the story might otherwise seem to start rather abruptly, but it keeps quite close to the distinctive regional ‘style.’ (The crocodile is of the salt-water variety, sometimes wrongly called ‘alligator.’)

They set off one day from where they were living. ‘Let's dive for lily roots!’ They got lilies, dived, dived again. This was at Breibrei, Rungunda-mir. They put the roots into the baskets they carried on their heads. They were shivering: the sun was cool.

That crocodile was coming close to those two girls, Rarmanawi and Rainbum. ‘Come on, elder sister, let's get more!’ He was coming closer, that crocodile. They dived again. He dived too. He grabbed Rainbum [the elder sister], pushed her on to her back by striking her with his tail. He held her close, copulating with her: she was his woman, that crocodile's woman! [He was no good! That was wrong!] ‘Oh, little sister!’ she cried out. He did it again, that wrong thing! Then he dived down, taking her under the water. He went far down, rose up to the surface, then dived again. ‘Gaarr!’ he said, using crocodile language. ‘Badu-lulu-luu, gaarr! where shall I sleep? His home was at Biri-biraa [Biree-biraa; actually Breibrei, but pronounced differently]. He hurried, dived down into his own place. Then he closed off that camp, fastened it securely all around. He kept ‘eating’ that girl, over and over again. He made her pregnant.

She stayed there, with that child (those children) inside her belly. ‘You stay here,’ he said, ‘I'll get fish for us.’ She stayed there. He set off again, for food. She stayed there. But she was unhappy. ‘I'm going away,’ she said, that pregnant mother. [At this point C. H. B. asked the narrator a question, as anyone in such an audience is entitled and even expected to do, to make sure she had understood: ‘You said “Mother.” Was the girl talking about going back to her own mother?’ ‘No. That girl herself was the mother.’]

She dug with her hands, trying to make a hole. At last she heard ‘Waaaaa!’ Water, sea water! She dug a hole through from that camp. ‘Ah! My country!’ She went quickly. She reached dry land.

A baby came out. She hurried on. Another came. She left that behind too. ‘What kind of a child is this! Let it lie there!’ [‘It was like a small crocodile,’ the narrator explained, not like a human being.] She listened, then went on again. Another baby came. She went on. Another. She went on. Another. She went on. Another. She went on. Another baby. She picked it up, held it across her shoulders, partly under her arm. She went on. ‘Where shall I get termite mound to warm and heal myself? Here!’ she said. ‘I'll “cook” myself over the hot termite mound, then heap seaweed on top and pour water over it.’ She squatted over the warmth, holding the baby in the smoke. Then she went on.

She crossed a small stream and heard a lot of people weeping, then one of her younger sisters calling, ‘Ah! Our elder sister is here! She hurried, and sat down. ‘Whose baby is that in your arms?’ ‘Crocodile!’ she said. [They looked at it, and were shocked.] ‘Quick, throw it away!’ They hit it with a stick and threw it away.

The crocodile came back with fish. ‘Hey, where are you, Python?’ [Her clan symbol.] He kept on talking, and searching about. ‘She must have gone! My wife, nice vulva, why did you run away? Nice public hair, nice breasts! Oh, my son(s), my wife!’ He followed her trail, and saw a baby. ‘My son!’ He picked it up, put it on his back. Then another. ‘My son, lying there!’ He picked it up, put it on his back. [The same with the others. The narrator sobbed, to show how he wept over each one. The ‘crocodile tears’ were genuine: the expression is a face-value one here, with an explicit meaning.] Then he saw the termite mound. ‘My son, my wife—here they were warming themselves!’ He crossed the stream, moved on slowly.

One man saw him. ‘Hey, a crocodile! Let's kill it—come on!’ They took knives, struck him, struck him, then burned him on a huge fire. He burned to death. (That's all!)

The opening cadences of the story indicate the accepted style for telling this kind of story, and other women used it too. The staccato phrasing here and there, the interpolation of conversational material, and gestures, pauses and facial expressions dramatize the verbal performance. Each narrator brings a personal quality to the telling.

While detailed analysis would be out of place, a couple of small points need mentioning. ‘Ninana’ (and other forms) can specify ‘sitting’ or sitting down, but refers more generally to camping, living, or simply being at a place. Here it implies that people are not moving about the country side, but settled at a camping site, and the story opens on this note: the main characters are human beings, in an appropriate setting—in a story, certainly, but contrasted with malignant spirits and bush creatures living ‘outside,’ in a wild state. Also regarding translation: buma (present), bumar (past) can mean hit or strike but it has other meanings too; in reference to hunting and root collecting (lily roots, for instance) it is best translated as ‘get,’ ‘got.’ The linking-particle spelt here as ‘aa’ can mean ‘and,’ ‘but,’ ‘while,’ and so on. Bulu is ‘again,’ or ‘more.’

In the discussion, the story-teller added that the girl already had a human husband, but no children yet. Asked whether the girl was punished, by her husband or by anyone else, she expressed surprise. ‘No, they just killed the crocodile.’ In response to another question (‘But how is it possible for a crocodile and a human girl … ?), she explained graphically how a male crocodile differed from a man in this respect. One thing she did not need to add because even children knew it. This was that crocodiles and pythons were clan symbols, of opposite moiety-categories, with ritual associations that were merely a background to this story.

The crocodile is portrayed as a mixed good-and-bad character. Having got the wife he wanted, he set out to be a good provider, in the usual male role of supplying fish and meat (whereas women supply vegetable foods, shellfish and smaller creatures). He was fond of her, and showed affection for his children. But, unlike some characters who do something locally defined as ‘wrong,’ he was punished without hesitation. The sequence of ‘punishment follows wrongdoing’ is not confined to this story itself. Children and adults are expected to link it with the social and natural environment of their everyday lives, and to the overall context of stories and myths. This includes other stories about crocodiles. For example, at the beginning of the world Crocodile couldn't make fire; he hurt his hands twirling his firestick, but no sparks came, until Blanket Lizard (Frilled Lizard) showed him how. (This is a how-to-make-fire story for children.) In other versions the two quarrel about fire; that's why blanket lizards have reddish ‘frills’ and crocodiles live in the water. Quarrelling about fire is a common story-theme, as in the Gandju myth. So is quarrelling about fresh water. Neither of these themes is so obvious in everyday life. In that regard, the crocodile-and-girl story is more ‘real.’ The trouble centres on a girl, as a potential wife: who will get her, how will she respond, and who and what will her offspring be—significant questions, among people who paid so much attention to producing new members in the ‘right’ categories and the ‘right’ relationships.

Stories such as this are rich in possibilities, over and above the aspect of entertainment—because this was told as a partly-humorous story. ‘Reducing’ it to writing leaves only a shadow of the dramatic performance.⁶ Suspense, wry humour, laughter, pathos, anger, despair and other emotions that the story-teller mimes, as well as tells about in words, come through less vividly and less immediately. But even to an outsider, the verbal dimension alone offers plenty of scope for analysis along various lines. Structurally, for instance, among the contrasts and oppositions and mediators are the human-domestic-scene where the story begins and ends, as against the crocodile-domestic-scene in the middle; the human versus non-human contrast; the above-ground versus underwater living-arena; the crocodile who is more ‘human’ than ordinary crocodiles, and more compassionate than the human characters in his story—although he and his offspring are defined by those human characters as totally crocodile. He is shown as being quite well informed about marriage rules, choosing a girl of the opposite moiety to himself. Also, he identified her individually, as Python, Wididj: traditionally, people were never addressed by personal names, but quite often by such ‘clan symbol’ labels. Of the human characters, only the two sisters are singled out, with an unidentified younger sister at the end, and an unidentified man (the narrator added later, when questioned, that he was the girl's husband). Note that it was the younger sister who urged that they should keep on diving when they already had plenty of lily roots.

Intensive analysis along structural or other lines would need to take into account what is not included in the narrative as such: the ‘inside views’ that are an accepted part of the local scene. A story-teller does not spell out what listeners are expected to know, unless they are children who could be expected to ask, or would be told if the story-teller thought that was necessary. In this story, for instance, listeners would realize that not everyone would dive for lilies—only women, and not necessarily all of those living in the same cluster of camps. The post-natal healing procedure is noted only briefly. No listener would ask, ‘How did the girl get fire for this?’ Even children would know how to make fire. Children would know also the dual meaning of the word ‘eat’ (luga). Usually a crocodile who ‘eats’ people consumes them as food; but ‘eating’ can mean having sexual relations. In either case, girls must take care, and this is one of the implications that are unspoken in the actual story but well understood outside it.

The story ends abruptly. Its practical and moral relevance is explored and explained in other contexts: the importance of marriage rules, for instance; the view that extra-marital as well as marital relations should fit within a conventionally acceptable framework, approved by the appropriate relatives, and not be on an individual-sweetheart basis which flouts most (if not all) of those rules. Wife-stealing was a feature of the region and one cause of the intermittent feuding that went on there. So was elopement. Romantic love and sentimental attachments within and outside marriage were accepted cultural themes in everyday life as well as in myth and story, co-existing with the system of formally arranged betrothals. That was true for other regions of Aboriginal Australia as well. But wife-stealing was a risky business, especially if the wife was reluctant or unwilling—as in this case. So, the story also offers a warning to would-be abductors. In fact, it conveys a number of messages to a diversity of listeners (as no doubt it does now to a diversity of readers, supporting Cassirer's contention that the ‘magic mirror’ of myth reflects the interests of those who look into it). And it is, or was traditionally, part of the teaching process for children: a lesson in how to tell a story, in the use of words and all that goes with them, in the realm of aesthetics just as much as in the realm of entertainment.

5 INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY

The most secret and the most sacred materials afford less scope for manoeuvre. Obviously, no two recitals or performances can be completely identical in every respect, but formulas tend to be more strictly adhered to, with sanctions to discourage or severely punish offenders. Rules were important, especially in songs and chants and invocations that were associated with rituals or were themselves rituals. However, provided the core-requirements were met (according to local criteria), small modifications and innovations could be introduced on the basis of dreams: usually the appropriate mythical character gave instructions or permission to an appropriate dreamer, who reported this experience, and if the new content or new form was accepted by the other persons concerned (especially, the other owners of a song or ritual sequence), it was adopted accordingly.

Personal variation in story-telling was well recognized, including variation in competence and in ability to hold the attention of an audience, but in many regions it was songs that provided a ready-made vehicle for self-expression. Even non-sacred or non-secret songs can be treated as unchanging and unchangeable, as if they were and should continue to be handed on unaltered from the past into the future. Children's songs from western Arnhem Land and from the Western Desert were of this kind. Some song-series accompanied with public dancing and mime have travelled over enormous distances, into areas where their specific word-meanings are not known and singers and listeners can give only a general idea of what they are about. For example, songs we heard near Ooldea on the transcontinental railway line in 1941 were almost identical with songs heard at Jigalong in the north of Western Australia in the early 1960s.

Traditional is a relative term. It need not mean ‘no change.’ Songs can be a traditional medium for expressing content that from the viewpoint of a given community is untraditional, or foreign. In the east Kimberley in the early 1940s, travelling songs were about Afghans (Punjabi traders) and their camels, Chinese fishermen and small traders in the Wyndham area, the individual habits and peculiarities of European pastoral station people, and difficulties between Aborigines and police. At Bathurst and Melville Islands, individual men and women were (and are) expected to ‘compose’ and sing short songs on such occasions as the death of a spouse or a close relative and subsequent mortuary rites, and the initiatory proceedings centred on the kulama bitteryam. They cover all sorts of personal experiences, and many use vivid imagery ostensibly from the natural world but actually referring to human relationships and behaviour.⁷ Traditional songs designed for healing, rain-making, keeping away venomous snakes, peace-making and love magic or erotic stimulation sometimes include personal observations about items of alien derivation. Even the two mythical Munga-munga girls of djarada love-song fame sang about station windmills. Throughout the Western Desert and into east Kimberley and the Northern Territory pastoral country, song-sequences revealed in dreams to individual songmen have been travelling in various directions for at least forty years, probably more, and new sequences or versions are still current; many report experiences with motor vehicles, station homesteads and towns, though the songman may still ‘fly’ to such places in his dream.

In northeastern Arnhem Land, the ‘Macassan’ song-cycle was regarded as thoroughly acclimatized into the local scene and not subject to alteration.⁸ A more flexible song-avenue for current comment was the djadbangari sequence, owned and composed by a young songman. Some of the most industrious songmen in western Arnhem Land, helped by their dream-familiars, composed songs that could include non-Aboriginal material but concentrated most heavily on interpersonal relations within their own region. Most of these draw on local gossip and observations. They do not name the subjects of their songs, but leave it to the listeners to guess who is involved; we therefore call them ‘gossip songs.’ Others are in the same style, but framed as if their characters were insects, birds, fish, and so on, with human emotions and attitudes.⁹ They are deceptively simple. We have deliberately omitted examples that are sexually explicit, humorously or earnestly so, and leave little to the imagination.

The two songs we include, from different songmen, report conversational ‘overheards’ of an everyday sort: one, a girl unobtrusively trying to find her current sweetheart, the other a wife resisting her husband's attempt to assert domestic authority. The Gunwinggu words indicate the rhythm, and the basis for the translation.

béngwar,                    yirirígmen          ngánang
deaf person,          move over (so) I see
ngabolg'bolgnang
I look          around
ngánang, náwid
I look,          he's different
Move over, silly, and let me look!
I          look          everywhere.
It's          the          wrong man!
[A husband says]
yimdórlga,          yímrei,                    yiwérgmei
get up,                              come here, clear (the place)
[His wife replies]
ngaii, ngawónmag
I,                    I don't want to
Get          up,          come and clear a place for          our          camp!
I don't want to,
ngamárwi-dóweng
I'm hungry
la wain'          ngúda          yiwérgmei
so (then) you                    clear (the place)
I'm hungry.
So you can clear it!

6 A FINAL COMMENT

Literature in Aboriginal Australia is not qualitatively different from its counterparts elsewhere. The fact that it was orally transmitted did link it more actively and more comprehensively with other media and other manifestations in the sphere of the arts. Also, it relied heavily on memory, with tangible mnemonic aids as a relatively minor consideration.

Some writers have suggested that people who traditionally depend on oral transmission show more confidence in handling words, and in their speech patterns, than those brought up in a tradition that concentrated on written materials.¹⁰ They could not have foreseen the current changes in communication and electronic technology, in scale and mobility of populations. More specifically, many Aborigines now are confronted with an immediate practical problem: how to keep their particular languages and literature (and other arts) in their own hands. They want to contribute to the general pool of Aboriginal literature and Aboriginal culture, but not at the expense of their own local traditions. However, their children are being introduced at school to an ever-expanding volume of new material. Adult literacy programs do the same, on a smaller scale. The environment of myth and story and song that traditionally provided a coherent context of meaning has been sharply eroded. There are more choices, and fewer obligations or incentives to look at traditional interconnections. The small innovations and changes—and continuities—of the past could not survive the virtual collapse of time-honoured precepts and boundaries. Some literacy programs, as in northeastern Arnhem Land and the Western Desert, are trying to salvage a few of their own stories in written form for children, with vernacular texts.¹¹ Other forms of self-expression such as autobiographical accounts, reminiscences and novels, represent new channels in which Aboriginal voices can be heard—and seen: but the traditional atmosphere, the interplay of comment and community participation, is almost impossible to recapture.

Notes

1. See e.g. C. H. Berndt, “Categorisation of, and in, Oral Literature,” in Australian Aboriginal Concepts (ed. L. R. Hiatt, Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1978); also, “Oral Literature,” in The Australian Aboriginal Heritage. An Introduction through the Arts (eds R. M. Berndt and E. S. Phillips, Sydney: Ure Smith, 1973, rev. ed. 1978); “Art and Aesthetic Expression,” in Australian Aboriginal Studies (ed. H. Sheils, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1963); and “Oral Literature: Myth and Song-Poetry,” The Australian Encyclopedia (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1977). R. M. and C. H. Berndt, The World of the First Australians (Sydney: Ure Smith, 2nd ed., 1977), includes a section on oral literature and a number of myths; our Man, Land and Myth in North Australia. The Gunwinggu People (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1970) includes myth and story material with discussion. Also, C. H. and R. M. Berndt, Pioneers and Settlers. The Aboriginal Australians (Melbourne: Pitman, 1978) e.g. Chapter 9, on songs and stories.

2. See e.g. chapters by K. Maddock, M. Blows, I. M. White and A. C. van der Leeden in Australian Aboriginal Mythology (ed. L. R. Hiatt, Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1975). Maddock has some more-or-less-structural analysis of Aboriginal myths in other volumes and journals too (e.g. in Australian Aboriginal Anthropology, ed. R. M. Berndt, Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 1970).

3. T. G. H. Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1971), pp. 146-163, 616.

4. R. M. Berndt, “A Day in the Life of a Dieri Man Before Alien Contact,” Anthropos 48 (1953); see e.g. pp. 193, 194.

5. R. M. Berndt, “Morality and Myth,” in Australian Aboriginal Anthropology; pp. 223, 220 (italics in original), 244. This focuses on the dingari myth-ritual complex in the Western Desert. See also Ursula McConnel, Myths of the Mungkan, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1957, for examples and discussion of myths from Cape York Peninsula, in Queensland.

6. C. H. Berndt, “A Drama of North-eastern Arnhem Land,” Oceania XXII (1952), 216-239, 275-289, was an attempt to recapture some of the dramatic quality of another story told by the same woman.

7. C. H. Berndt, “Expressions of Grief Among Aboriginal Women,” Oceania XX (1950), 286-332; see esp. pp. 289-305.

8. See R. M. Berndt, “External Influences on the Aboriginal,” Hemisphere 9 (1965): e.g. pp. 7, 8.

9. See R. M. and C. H. Berndt, “Time for Relaxation,” in Pacific Linguistic Studies in Honour of Arthur Capell (eds S. A. Wurm and D. C. Laycock, Canberra: Australian National University; Sydney: A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1970).

10. A. K. Coomaraswamy, “The Bugbear of Literacy,” Asia and the Americas XLIV (1944), 53-57.

11. C. H. Berndt, “Aboriginal Children's Literature,” in an off-campus course on “Children's Literature” (Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, 1980), discusses some of this material: e.g., small volumes produced by local communities, including vernacular texts as well as English translation.