MUNJARRA THE MORNING AND EVENING STAR

The legend and the song of Munjarra, the morning and evening star, that is sung in one of the songs called Leira in the Djauan tribe

In the dreamtime a blackfellow went down to the river to have a swim and to gather some mussels. As he walked into the river, he saw a bright stone lying on the bottom. He picked it out of the water and held it wet and shining on the open palm of his hand, looking at it. He had only just started to look at it when, suddenly it went away out of his hand and up into the sky.

This stone was a blackfellow named Munjarra. And Munjarra went on up into the sky and began to walk about up there. He looked down and saw all his country lying out below him. He saw the river gleaming like a long winding snake and he saw many other little snakes coming in to join it. He saw plains and plains of grass and the gleam of billabongs. And he saw where the stone and the sand countries began and the long backbones of mountains. And then, far beyond everything, he saw the gleam of the salt water.

And Munjarra thought he would come down to his country again. But when he tried, he found he could not get down. He walked over the sky this way and that, but could see no way to get down. Then Munjarra realized he would have to stay up there. “Oh,” he said, “it must be that I have to be like Morwey the sun and burn up the earth.”

But Morwey the sun heard him say this, and in a loud voice Morwey shouted, “No! I am the one who has to light up the daytime. You had better go and light up the nighttime.”

And Munjarra went away from Morwey the sun and waited until Morwey had gone down out of the sky. And then Munjarra came out and began to light up the nighttime. He was the first star, burning brightly above the place where Morwey had gone out of the sky.

And once when Munjarra appeared in the night he saw, through the leaves of paper-bark trees, some blackfellows camped. And Munjarra called out to them, “Goodbye, my brothers, I am going down now under the sea. And I wait under the sea until I begin to feel Morwey the sun coming from a long way off. Then I know it is time for me to come up again on the other side of the sea, and at this time the tide of the sea is coming in and it lifts me and washes me into the sky.”

And the blackfellows saw Munjarra as he went down through the leaves of the paper-barks towards the sea. And they put him into one of their songs that are sung to the playing of the bamboo drone-pipe, to the playing of the boomerangs and to the clapping of hands.


From The Boomerang Book of Legendary Tales