ws, and so effectual was their attack that every dog
was killed, as well as Bougoodoogahdah and her two little dogs.

The old woman lay where she had been slain, but as the blacks went away
they heard her cry "Bougoodoogahdah." So back they went and broke her
bones, first they broke her legs and then left her. But again as they
went they heard her cry "Bougoodoogahdah." Then back again they came,
and again, until at last every bone in her body was broken, but still
she cried "Bougoodoogahdah." So one man waited beside her to see whence
came the sound, for surely, they thought, she must be dead. He saw her
heart move and cry again "Bougoodoogahdah" and as it cried, out came a
little bird from it. This little bird runs on the moorillahs and calls
at night "Bougoodoogahdah." All day it stays in one place, and only at
night comes out. It is a little greyish bird, something like a weedah.
The blacks call it a rain-maker, for if any one steals its eggs it
cries out incessantly "Bougoodoogahdah" until in answer to its call the
rain falls. And when the country is stricken with a drought, the blacks
look for one of these little birds, and finding it, chase it, until it
cries aloud "Bougoodoogahdah, Bougoodoogahdah" and when they hear its
cry in the daytime they know the rain will soon fall.

As the little bird flew from the heart of the woman, all the dead
dingoes were changed into snakes, many different kinds, all poisonous.
The two little dogs were changed into dayall minyah, a very small kind
of carpet snake, non-poisonous, for these two little dogs had never
bitten the blacks as the other dogs had done. At the points of the
Moorillahs where Bougoodoogahdah and her dingoes used to slay the
blacks, are heaps of white stones, which are supposed to be the
fossilised bones of the massacred men.

26. THE BORAH OF BYAMEE

Word had been passed from tribe to tribe, telling, how that the season
was good, there must be a great gathering of the tribes. And the place
fixed for the gathering was Googoorewon. The old men whispered that it
should be the occasion for a borah, but this the women must not know.
Old Byamee, who was a great Wirreenun, said he would take his two sons,
Ghindahindahmoee and Boomahoomahnowee, to the gathering of the tribes,
for the time had come when they should be made young men, that they
might be free to marry wives, eat emu flesh, and learn to be warriors.

As tribe after tribe arrived at Googoorewo