spirit in Australian Aborigines: the languages and customs of several tribes of aborigines in the western district of Victoria, Australia

Record context

Record ID

3224

Source

Internet Archive

Publication

Australian Aborigines: the languages and customs of several tribes of aborigines in the western district of Victoria, Australia; James Dawson

Published

1881 public-domain western Victorian ethnographic source exposed through an exact Internet Archive item

Narrative type

Spirit-Person Narratives

Public-text label

spirit

Archive period

Gold Rush Colonial

Location

Western District, VIC (VIC): B

State or territory

VIC

Source voice

Source Grounded Section Record

Publicness

Public Text Item

Source-grounded excerpt

Merrang, on the Hopkins River, when that country was first occupied with live stock ; and they described him as a huge black man, carrying a great many spears, with a long train of snakes streaming behind him, ‘like smoke from a steamboat.’ The Muuruup lives deep under the ground in a place called Ummekulleen, and has under his command a number of inferior spirits, who are permitted to visit the surface of the earth occasionally. No human being has ever returned to tell what kind of place Ummekulleen is. There is a belief, however, that there is nothing but fire there, and that the souls of bad people get neither meat nor drink,.

The excerpt is presented as public-source context. Terminology belongs to the cited source and may be historical, contested, culturally specific, or outdated.

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