NORTH QUEENSLAND ETHNOGRAPHY — ROTH. 77 



pregnancy the weaker sex have the limits of their menu still 

 further reduced, by not being allowed to eat this or that, e.g., 

 rock-cod between the Mossman and Cairns, where, should the 

 forbidden fruits be partaken of, the fish would entirely disappear 

 out of the sea, and the guilty parties die of sore bellies. And to 

 crown all, whatever is cooked by men, all women have to regard 

 as tabu. Old men may, indeed, institute the ban over any food 

 which, owing to scarcity, they may wish to reserve for themselves. 

 The social organisation of the tribe also bears important relations 

 to the restrictions placed upon food, in that an individual dare 

 not eat the various animals belonging to his or her own exogamous 

 group ; or, as the natives will often describe it, " belong all same 

 skin." In certain districts, however, e.g., Boulia, the animal, etc., 

 may be killed by him for others. But again, a native is every- 

 where restricted both from giving or accepting presents of food to 

 or from certain of his relatives (see further). Parents have, of 

 course, to provide the necessary food for their children up to the 

 time of their first initiation, but in the hinterland of Princess 

 Charlotte Bay, whatever a child up to that period rinds in the 

 way of diet, e.g., iguana, sugar-bag, is tabu from its parents ; this 

 particular prohibition having the special term of womba applied 

 to it by the Kokowarra. 



S. Certain foods are also tabu (neither mentioned nor eaten) in 

 connection with the various ceremonies. For instance, both 

 during, and for some time subsequently to initiation, the young 

 man is specially forbidden different diets ; during the course of 

 the burial celebrations on the Pennefather River, and Peninsula 

 generally, the relatives specially charged with the proper execu- 

 tion of the rites are prohibited eating meat-flesh, etc. 



9. There appears to be no constancy in the light with which the 

 eating by the individual of his name-sake, when it happens to be 

 an animal or plant, is regarded ; on the Palmer River it is tabu, 

 on the Tully it is not. 



10. The spot where anyone has been finally buried is tabu from 

 the women only, men can visit there. This form of restriction 

 also includes certain things connected with the present history of 

 the deceased from the dilly-bag in which the mourning-string has 

 been placed, even anything and everything in the hut where the 

 bark trough with its enclosed corpse has rested (Bloomfield River), 

 down to the particular locality where his own or other nature- 

 spirits are supposed to linger. At Cape Bedford the birth-place 

 is similarly tabu from everybody except the parents, the prohibi- 

 tion comprising anything brought to the spot where the baby is 

 lying, or anything that it is allowed to touch ; the navel-strings 



