division of the
tribe, and the members of it do not usually keep to themselves but live
more or less interfused with members of all the other totemic clans
which together compose the tribe. Now amongst the Warramunga the
Wollunqua or mythical water-snake is the totem of such a clan or tribal
subdivision, the members of which believe themselves to be descended
from the creature and call themselves by its name. So far, therefore,
the Wollunqua is merely a totem of the ordinary sort, an object of
respect for a particular section of the tribe. Like other totemic
ancestors the Wollunqua is supposed to have wandered about the country
leaving supplies of spirit individuals at various points, individuals
who are constantly undergoing reincarnation. But on the other hand the
Wollunqua differs from almost all other Australian totems in this, that
whereas they are real objects, such as animals, plants, water, wind, the
sun and moon, and so on, the Wollunqua is a purely mythical creature,
which exists only in the imagination of the natives; for they believe it
to be a water-snake so huge that if it were to stand up on its tail, its
head would reach far up into the sky. It now lives in a large pool
called Thapauerlu, hidden away in a lonely valley of the Murchison
Range; but the Warramunga fear that it may at any moment sally out and
do some damage. They say that it actually killed a number of them on one
of its excursions, though happily they at last succeeded in beating it
off. So afraid are they of the creature, that in speaking of it amongst
themselves they will not use its proper name of Wollunqua but call it
instead _urkulu nappaurinnia_, because, as they told Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen, if they were to name it too often by its real name they would
lose control over the beast and it would rush forth and devour
them.[135] Thus the natives do not distinguish the Wollunqua from the
rest of their actually existing totems, as we do: they have never beheld
him with their bodily eyes, yet to them he is just as real as the
kangaroos which they see hopping along the sands, as the flies which
buzz about their heads in the sunshine, or as the cockatoos which flap
screaming past in the thickets. How real this belief in the mythical
snake is with these savages, was brought vividly home to Messrs. Spencer
and Gillen when they visited, in company with some natives, the deep and
lonely pool among the rocky hills in which the awful being is supp