them.  He was tired of travelling alone.  He saw them all start out with their yam-sticks in hand.  Following them he saw them stop by the nests of some flying ants and unearth the ants.  Then they sat down, threw their yam-sticks aside, and ate the ants, which are esteemed a great delicacy.  While they were eating Wurrunnah sneaked up to their yam-sticks and stole two of them.  When the girls had eaten all they wanted only five of them could find their sticks; so those five started off, expecting that the other two would soon find their sticks and follow them.

The two girls hunted all around the ants’ nests, but could find no sticks.  At last, when their backs were turned toward him, Wurrunnah crept out and stuck the lost yam-sticks near together in the ground; then he slipped back to his hiding-place.  When the two girls turned round, there in front of them they saw their sticks.  With a cry of joyful surprise they ran to them and caught hold of them to pull them out of the ground, in which they were firmly stuck.  As they were doing so, out from his hiding-place jumped Wurrunnah.  He seized both girls round their waists, holding them tightly.  They struggled and screamed, but to no purpose.  There was none near to hear them, and the more they struggled the tighter Wurrunnah held them.  Finding their screams and struggles in vain they quietened at length, and then Wurrunnah told them not to be afraid, he would take care of them.  He was lonely, he said, and wanted two wives.  They must come quietly with him and he would be good to them.  But they must do as he told them.  If they were not quiet he would swiftly quieten them with his moorillah.  But if they would come quietly with him he would he good to them.  Seeing that resistance was useless the two young girls complied with his wish, and travelled quietly on with him.  They told him that some day their tribe would come and steal them back again; to avoid which he travelled quickly on and on still farther hoping to elude pursuit.  Some weeks passed and he told his wives to go and get some bark from two pine-trees near by.  They declared if they did so he would never see them again.  But he answered “Talk not so foolishly; if you ran away soon should I catch you and, catching you, would beat you hard.  So talk no more.”  They went and began to cut the bark from the trees.  As they did so each felt that her tree was rising higher out of the ground and bearing her upward with it.  Higher and higher grew the pine-trees and up with them went the girl until at last the tops touched the sky.  Wurrunnah called after them, but they listened not.  Then they heard the voices of their five sisters, who from the sky stretched forth their hands and drew the two others in to live with them in the sky, and there you may see the seven sisters together.  We know them as the Pleiades, but the black fellows call them the Meamei.

A few rather improper tales regarding the sun and moon are recorded in Woods’s Native Tribes by Meyer, who thus sums up two of them (200); the other being too obscene for citation here: