Note 797 — Chapter VIII · THE IDEA OF THE SOUL

Strehlow translates it by Kinderkeime (children-germs). It is not true that Spencer and Gillen have ignored the myth of the ratapa and the customs connected with it. They explicitly mention it in Nat. Tr., pp. 336 ff. and 552. They noticed, at different points of the Arunta territory, the existence of rocks called Erathipa from which the spirit children, or the children's souls, disengage themselves, to enter the bodies of women and fertilize them. According to Spencer and Gillen, Erathipa means child, though, as they add, it is rarely used in this sense in ordinary conversation (ibid., p. 338).