The sun they consider to be a female, who, when she sets, passes the dwelling-places of the dead.  As she approaches the men assemble and divide into two bodies, leaving a road for her to pass between them; they invite her to stay with them, which she can only do for a short time, as she must be ready for her journey for the next day.  For favors granted to some one among them she receives a present of red kangaroo skin; and therefore in the morning, when she rises, appears in a red dress.

The moon is also a woman, and not particularly chaste.  She stays a long time with the men, and from the effects of her intercourse with them, she becomes very thin and wastes away to a mere skeleton.  When in this state, Nurrunduri orders her to be driven away.  She flies, and is secreted for some time, but is employed all the time in seeking roots which are so nourishing that in a short time she appears again, and fills out and becomes fat rapidly.

Here we see how even such sublime and poetic phenomena as sun and moon are to the aboriginal mind only symbols of their coarse, sensual lives:  the heavenly bodies are concubines of the men, welcomed when fat, driven away when thin.  That puts the substance of Australian love in a nutshell.

BARRINGTON’S LOVE-STORY

In the absence of aboriginal love-stories let us amuse ourselves by examining critically a few more of the alleged cases of romantic love discovered by Europeans.  The erudite German anthropologist Gerland expresses his belief (VI., 755) that notwithstanding the degradation of the Australians “cases of true romantic love occur among them,” and he refers for an instance to Barrington (I., 37).  On consulting Barrington I find the following incident related as a sample of “genuine love in all its purity.”  I condense the unessential parts: 

A young man of twenty-three, belonging to a tribe near Paramatta, was living in a cave with two sisters, one of fourteen, the other of twenty.  One day when he returned from his kangaroo hunt he could not find the girls.  Thinking they had gone to fetch water or roots for supper, he sat down till a rain-storm drove him into the cave, where he stumbled over the prostrate form of the younger sister.  She was lying in a pool of blood, but presently regained consciousness and told him that a man had come to carry off her sister, after beating her on the head.  She had seized the sister’s arm to hold her back when the brute knocked her over with his club and dragged off the sister.

It was too late to take revenge that day, but next morning the two set out for the tribe to which the girl-robber belonged.  As they approached the camp, Barrington continues, “he saw the sister of the very savage who had stolen his sister; she was leaving her tribe to pick some sticks for a fire (this was indeed a fine opportunity for revenge); so making his sister