170 SUPERSTITIONS OF NORTH QUEENSLAND ABORIGINES, 
never fail to mourn for the victims; the mourners smearing 
their faces with white clay, and cutting their heads. In addition 
to this too, abstinence, with respect to certain food, is practised 
for some time afterwards, and even when months have passed 
by, the death song * is nightly chanted. 
Spirits. 
The blacks believe that their existence on earth does not ter- 
minate with the death of their bodies, and that the spirits both 
of the men and women still survive. In this spiritual state they 
are known as Limbeen-jar-golong, the word Limbeen denoting the 
bark of a tree, a name with, perhaps, some metaphorical allu- 
sion to the fact that during the day the spirits remain where the 
bodies which once contained them were deposited, and only 
show themselves at night—coming as it were from behind the 
bark of a tree. The old man Plungren was very familiar with 
these spirits, and had arrived at a somewhat remarkable estimate 
of their personal appearance. They were all bone as it were— 
mere skeletons—and yet they possessed long ears, erect like 
* With reference to this particular class of musical expression, the 
following interesting observations were communicated by Mr. P. R.Gordon 
to the Brisbane Courier, whilst this paper was being revised for publi- 
cation :—“ In the ordinary corroboree the song or chant is carried on 
throughout in a major key, whereas the death wail, or song, is always 
chanted in a minor key. So that the minor key would appear to suggest 
itself to savages, as well as to highly cultured musicians, as the most 
appropriate for giving expression to feelings of sorrow. So far as I can 
remember, Handel’s “ Dead March in Saul ”—which is in the natural key 
of C major—is the only notable exception of doleful music being written 
in a major key. About thirty years ago a Murray chief died, and, in the 
middle of the night, a large camp of blacks, near the hut in’which I was 
sleeping, set up a death wail, the theme or refrain of which was so 
frequently repeated, that I was enabled to roughly write down the music. 
All of a sudden the whole camp, as if by a preconcerted signal, burst into 
what might be described as a coda in a major key. On inquiry next 
morning, one of the younger blacks (for I found the elder ones severely 
silent on the matter) informed me that the first part was a lament for 
the chief, and the short coda was a menace to the spirits of the hostile 
tribes present, that the death of their chief would be revenged.” [Kd.] 
