YULUNGGUL SNAKE. Yulunggul is the Great Python of north-central Arnhem Land, who swallowed the Wawalag sisters and their child(ren). Yulunggul is most often identified as male, with or without female counterparts. One northeastern Arnhem Land version specifies Yulunggul as female but with symbolic male (phallic) implications.

William Lloyd Warner's account (1937, e.g. p. 257) notes a variety of snakes, goannas, and snails as sons of Yulunggul. In a couple of women's versions, Yulunggul's python children, who live in the water hole with him, ask him to regurgitate what he has eaten so that they can eat it too. Warner refers to Yulunggul as "great father" (Yindi Bapa or Bapa Yindi), but it is possible that he misheard the more usual expression, "great snake" (Yindi Baapi).

Unlike so many of the great mythic characters, who came from elsewhere to sites that were to be spiritually associated with...