Bahloo the moon was the maker of girl babies, in which work Wahn the crow sometimes helped. But it did not do for Wahn to be left to make them alone, for all the girl babies he made grew up to be noisy, quarrelsome women.
Bu-maya-mul the wood lizard made the boys, with sometimes a helping hand from Bahloo.
Bahloo and Wahn were both great wirinuns, and lived together.
One day Wahn said, “Suppose, instead of always making fresh babies to take their place, we give the dead people a chance, and let them come to life again. We could do it together.”
“No,” said Bahloo, “they are dead. The worst of them are burned by now, the bad ones are with the Eleanba Wunda, the good are in Bullima, or roaming where they please. Let them stay dead.”
“But a great many have died lately—we shall have too few people on the earth if we let them all die.”
“Never mind, make more babies. Let them die.”
More than once Wahn tried to persuade Bahloo to join him in making the dead people live again, but Bahloo said, “Let them be. Their spirits may be in others by now. Let them be.”
These repeated refusals made Wahn angry. One day he went off hunting alone. He came to a big gum tree where he saw a large number of Yulu-mara, or grubs. He went back to his camp.
He said again to Bahloo, “Well, have you thought better of it yet? Will you help me to make the dead live again?”
“No,” said Bahloo. “Let them lie dead. Their widows can marry the young men.”
Then Wahn told him that he had found a tree with quantities of grubs on it, and proposed that they should go out together and get as many as they wanted.
They went, and when they reached the tree Wahn said, “I will stay down here. You go up the tree, and hook the grubs out with this.” And he gave him a midjeer, or stick with a barbed end.
Up went Bahloo, and with the hooked stick quickly fished out a number of grubs, which he threw down to Wahn.
Each time he did so, Wahn breathed on the tree, which at each breath grew higher and higher. Over and over again this happened until at last the topmost branches were near the sky. Then Bahloo noticed the height, and said, “Why, where am I? Where have I got to?”
Even as he spoke the tree went right into the sky. Bahloo looked down, and away below him on the earth stood Wahn, who called out, “Stay where you are up there. You would not help me to try and give the dead men a chance to live again. You can stay by yourself up in the sky. I can make the girl babies alone.”
And there every night that the moon is shining, Bahloo and the tree can be seen.
Bahloo travels all across the sky to try and reach the earth again, but he has to change his form to do so, for his old enemy, Yhi the sun, keeps a lookout to prevent him.
Long, long before this Yhi had loved Bahloo and wished to marry him, but he said she had had too many lovers—she should never have him. This made Yhi so angry that her love had turned to hate. And when Bahloo was put up in the sky by Wahn, she told the spirits who hold up the sky by standing all around the edge of it that whenever Bahloo came near them they were to hunt him back. They must watch, she said, all the time while she, wrapped in her red kangaroo skins, slept. If they let Bahloo escape, she would knock down the spirit who sits in the center of the sky holding the ends of the kurrajong-fiber ropes to which the earth hangs. Then, down would sink the earth to a place of darkness, where they should go with it.
After this threat Bahloo found it impossible to escape, anxious as he was to return to his babymaking, for with only Wahn at that work the world would soon be full of noisy, shrieking women.
At last he thought he would try to get past the spirits in another form. He took that of an emu. The spirits thought he was Gowa-gay the sky emu, and they let him pass.
When Bahloo was safe on earth again, he went to his old camp. His dogs, not knowing him, rushed out barking furiously. He spoke; his wives knew his voice, and called the dogs off. Then he changed himself into his original shape. But he feared that the barking of the dogs might have drawn his brothers’ attention to him—they, he knew, did not want him back, desiring his wives for themselves, for should he not return they had first right to them. He told his wives to put a log, which held a Mingga spirit, into their wurley, or shelter, cover it with an opossum rug, then sneak away with him to a bira, or whitewood tree, where he knew there were quantities of grubs, near which they would camp, certain of food.
They had scarcely left, when stealthily up toward the covered log came one of Bahloo’s brothers, meaning to kill him. He swung his boondi, or club, around, and brought it down on the log with fearful force; once, twice, thrice he did so. Then he kicked the log, which seemed to kick him back again, and which seemed hard, not soft, as a body would. His foot felt tingling with pain. What had kicked him? he wondered. He seized hold of the opossum rug, pulled it off and saw nothing under it. [A Mingga, or spirit tree, has the power to make itself invisible, even moving invisibly away.] He looked around the camp—the women were not there—then, knowing Bahloo his brother was a wirinun, or clever man, he realized that he had been tricked.
Limping back to his own camp, he determined to track them all next day. But he was never able to find Bahloo, who, whenever danger threatened him on earth, just changed himself into an emu.
Bahloo and his wives had a great feast of grubs; then he went off to his babymaking. After he had made some little girls, his friend Bu-maya-mul, the little long-tongued wood lizard, joined him with some little boys he had nearly made. He tried to alter some of Bahloo’s little girls into boys, saying that boys were best, for they were the stronger fighters and better hunters, but Bahloo said, “Do not do that. Better have some girls. The boys will want wives sometime.”
Then together these two made a number of little boys and girls, which when they were finished they sent to Walla-gudjail-wan, who has charge of the child spirits who are waiting to be born, or reborn, as earth children. Walla-gudjail-wan is very fond of mussels, of which she collects great heaps, and if the children touch them she gets so angry that she puts them away. Then Walla-guroon-bu-an, another spirit kind to children, takes pity on them and promises them earth mothers.
Those spirits who have been children before, and died young, when asked by him to name an earth mother they will choose to go to, generally name the women who were their earth mothers before. To these Walla-guroon-bu-an sends them, to be reincarnated, or born again. Or if their own mothers were not kind to them, they mention other women whom on earth they liked, and to those they are sent. Such child spirits as never had an earth mother, or cannot remember her, and know no names of others, have to take their chances. Walla-guroon-bu-an sends them off to the earth to hide themselves in the long drooping branches of the coolabah trees. The first woman who passes under the branch on which a spirit child awaits is chosen by that child for its mother.
When one of these tree spirit-children is born there is always a coolabah leaf in its mouth, which has to be taken out immediately, or the child will die and its spirit return to the tree it came from. If the spirit children are left in the trees long, they wail and become very unhappy. The old spirits take pity on them and to stop their wailing turn them into bahn, or mistletoe clumps, hanging from trees; the babies’ blood makes the red bahn flowers.
Sometimes there are clear spaces under these drooping trees. These are said to have been swept by the spirits for the wirinuns to come and lie on and talk to them.
When Bahloo is late showing himself in the sky, the blacks say, “Bahloo has been making girl babies; they take longer to make than boys.”
They know when he is coming by the haze that precedes him. “Look,” they say, “Bahloo is coming, there is his dust.”
It is Wahn the crow who changes girls into young women, at which time they have to please him by saying aloud the cry of his tribe, “Wah! Wah! Wah!”
But Bahloo has influence over women’s lives from their births to their deaths.