Now, time to begin going back through Levy-Bruhls' sources, and I found this online. Project Gutenberg. Link at the end of the article.
Anyways, a curious read, while she's clearly enamored with her subjects there are the superior European Prejudices at work.
Trying to cross-reference much of her vocabulary online is fruitless - while she first defines the word and gives you a glossary for the terms in the back, if you should attempt to find some further insight upon it you'll come up largely empty. Words like wirreenun's boondoorr, or dillee bag, Minggah, yunbeai, Goomarh (spirit stone), dinahgurrerhlowah, or moolee, (death-dealing stone), goorerwon, goomil, gurroo, Eulooway, Waddahgudjaelwon, and every page is filled with a dozen such terms. I was curious to see examples - photographs, she talks frequently about "crystals" the natives used for medicine, but - alas, there is no elaboration.
Anyways, a few of the more memorable (albeit not so Politically Correct) quotes follow:
"It is hard to believe a black ever does suffer from insomnia, yet the cure argues the fact."
When a baby clutches hold of anything as if to give it to some one, the bargie—grandmother—or some elderly woman takes what the baby offers, and makes a muffled clicking sort of noise with her tongue rolled over against the roof of her mouth, then croons the charm which is to make the child a free giver: so is generosity inculcated in extreme youth. I have often heard the grannies croon over the babies:
Oonahgnai Birrablee,
Oonahgnoo Birrahlee,
Oonahgnoo Birrahlee,
Oonabmillangoo Birrahlee,
Gunnoognoo oonah Birrahlee.Which translated is:
'Give to me, Baby,
Give to her, Baby,
Give to him, Baby,
Give to one, Baby,
Give to all, Baby.'
In the characters of witty repartee, invariably somewhat racist:
An old gin who worked about the station had a pierced nose, and often wore a mouyerh, or bone, through it. A white laundress wore earrings. She said one day to the old gin:
'Why you have hole made in your nose and put that bone there? No good that. White women don't do that.'
The black woman looked the laundress up and down, and finally anchored her eyes on the earrings.
'Why you make hole in your ears? No good that. Black gin no do that, pull 'em down your ears like dogs. Plenty good bone in your nose make you sing good. Sposin' cuggil—bad—smell you put bone longa nose no smell 'im. Plenty good make hole longa nose, no good make hole longa ears, make 'em hang down all same dogs.' And off she went laughing, and pulling down the lobes of her ears, began to imitate the barking of a dog.
Certainly, amongst the blacks, age is no disqualification for a woman; she never seems to be too old to marry, and certainly with age gains power.
There are two codes of morals, one for men and one for women. Old Testament morality for men, New Testament for women. The black men keep the inner mysteries of the Boorah, or initiation ceremonies, from the knowledge of women, but so do Masons keep their secrets.
The bush of Australia is a good background for superstition; there is such a non-natural air about its Nature, as if it has been sketched in roughly by a Beardsley-like artist.
Poor old Beemunny! Something in my own woman nature went out to her in sympathy. She was old, she was ugly, her husband was dead, as were all men to her.
***
Anyways, more anecdotal than a thesis, colorful depictions of a way of life largely disappeared. Other interesting points - that they enforced the death penalty for women convicted of infidelity, and she describes the infidelity as "frailty", which is a curious turn of the phrase. There is the ritual nature of initiations, the descriptions of the desert and bush, the Yowee, a skeleton spirit with big head and fiery eyes whose coming meant death, and the recognition that - as observed abundantly in Western Culture and various others - that frequently when dying the aborigines would recognize the dead coming to escort them.
And then her throw-away remark about geologists suspecting that there might be diamonds on the Moorilla ridges...but, search as I may, there's nothing, only wineries...
Link: Wiki on K. Langloh Parker
Link: The Euahlayhi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia - by K. Langloh Parker