ritualists suggested their ideas to the older blacks (for
mediumship seems to be nearly extinct since the settling of the
country), that any transmission of such notions to the Black Fellows
must be very ancient. Our authorities are Mr. Brough Smyth, in
Aborigines of Victoria (i. 472), and Messrs. Fison and Howitt, in
Kamilaroi and Kurnai, who tell just the same tale. The spirits in
Victoria are called Mrarts, and are understood to be the souls of
Black Fellows dead and gone, not demons unattached. The mediums,
now very scarce, are Birraarks. They were consulted as to things
present and future. The Birraark leaves the camp, the fire is kept
low, and some one 'cooees' at intervals. 'Then a noise is heard.
The narrator here struck a book against the table several times to
describe it.' This, of course, is 'spirit-rapping'. The knocks
have a home among the least cultivated savages, as well as in
mediaeval and modern Europe. Then whistles are heard, a phenomenon
lavishly illustrated in certain seances held at Rio de Janeiro {41a}
where children were mediums. The spiritual whistle is familiar to
Glanvil and to Homer. Mr. Wesley, at Epworth (1716), noted it among
all the other phenomena. The Mrarts are next heard 'jumping down,'
like the kenaimas. Questions are put to them, and they answer.
They decline, very naturally, to approach a bright fire. The medium
(Birraark) is found entranced, either on the ground where the Mrarts
have been talking, or at the top of a tree, very difficult to climb,
'and up which there are no marks of any one having climbed'. The
blacks, of course, are peculiarly skilled in detecting such marks.
In maleficent magic, as among the Dene Hareskins, the Australian
sorcerer has 'his head, body, and limbs wound round with stringy
bark cords'. {41b} The enchantment is believed to drag the victim,
in a trance, towards the sorcerer. This binding is customary among
the Eskimo, and, as Mr. Myers has noted, was used in the rites
described by the Oracles in 'trance utterances,' which Porphyry
collected in the fourth century. Whether the binding was thought to
restrain the convulsions of the mediums, or whether it was,
originally, a 'test condition,' to prevent the medium from cheating
(as in modern experiments), we cannot discover. It does not appear
to be in use among the Maoris, whose speciality is 'trance
utterance'.

A very picturesque description of a Maori seance is given in Old New
Zea