Note 20 — Chapter IX

Mrs. Langloh Parker writes, concerning the Euahlayi Baiame-worshipping tribe of New South Wales: 'A person has often a second or individual totem of his name, not hereditary, and given him by the wirreenuns' (medicine men), 'called his yunbeai, any hurt to which injures him, and which he may never eat—his hereditary totem he may. He is supposed to be able, if he be a great wirreenun, to take the form of his yunbeai, which will also give him assistance in time of trouble or danger, is a sort of alter ego, as it were.' In this tribe the yunbeai (nyarong, nagual, manitu) is of more importance to the individual than his hereditary totem, which, however, by Baiame's law, regulates marriage, as elsewhere (Folk-Lore, x. 491, 492). The tribe studied by Mrs. Langloh Parker speaks a dialect (Euahlayi) akin to the Kamilaroi, but the Kamilaroi of Mr. Ridley are seated three or four hundred miles away.