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

Record context

Record ID

3233

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

spirits

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

one of them, and the doctor presses the rug containing the doll to the patient’s chest for some minutes, and then departs. If the sick person is a chief or a chief's wife, or of superior rank, and the doctor, on visiting him at sunset, finds it beyond his power to remove the disease in the usual way, he goes up to the clouds after dark, and fetches down ten spirits. These he places at a distance of fifty yards from the sick person. He then has a conversation with his patient, and, after kneading him all over to ascertain the seat of the disease, he informs the spirits, and they tell him what to do. Having received his.

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