Three more tales of the Noongahburrahs, the Aboriginal people of the Narran River country in the north-west of New South Wales, collected by Katie Langloh Parker and published in her "Australian Legendary Tales" in 1896 — the first collection of the legends of a single people, gathered as they were told to the children of the tribe, and read here in Parker's own English.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A jealous bustard tricks the emu queen into giving up her wings, and is answered by a trick that costs her all but two of her children. Two wives, refused the grinding stone, fill their water bags, empty the waterhole, and leave their husband to follow their tracks to a river he cannot cross. And in the great drought, when the young men murmur that the tribe will die, old Wirreenun brings the storm, stands against the lightning, and fills a dry plain with fish.
As Parker printed them, the tales carry her period words for the people who told them. In "Dinewan the Emu," the emus' wings are cut off in a single sentence, and Goomblegubbon kills all her young ones but two in a single clause — told at that weight, as the tale's own moral, for Dinewan condemns her for it to her face. In "Goomblegubbon, Beeargah, and Ouyan," the husband vows to kill his runaway wives, but the vow is never carried out: he never finds them again. In "Wirreenun," the borah is named only as the gathering the elders plan at the end; no ceremonial content is described.
Katie Langloh Parker (1856–1940), "Australian Legendary Tales: Folk-lore of the Noongahburrahs as Told to the Piccaninnies" (London: David Nutt; Melbourne: Melville, Mullen & Slade, 1896).
Narrated by Benedetto. Music: instrumental bed, "Istanbul Cello Nocturne."
Chapters:
00:57 Dinewan the Emu, and Goomblegubbon the Bustard
08:36 Goomblegubbon, Beeargah, and Ouyan
12:06 Wirreenun the Rainmaker
Australian folk tales · Aboriginal folk tales · Australian folklore · Katie Langloh Parker · Australian legends · Oceanian folk tales · world folk tales · free audiobook
