"STAR RUN ABOUT" 



" It is the stars, 

 The stars above us, govern our conditions." 



SHAKESPEARE. 



PRIMITIVE folk have ever looked up to the heavens for 

 signs of good and ill. Celestial appearances have fought 

 for them terrestrial battles, or have weakened their 

 arms by prognostications of impending disaster. 



Appeals have been made to passionless planets for 

 justice against mundane decrees, and when coincidences 

 have been favourable the devout student of the skies 

 has loudly proclaimed them as proof of supernatural 

 interest in trivial, transient occurrences. In accordance 

 with the degree of poetry in the fibre of the people, so, 

 in a certain degree, has the belief in stellar influence been 

 manifest. 



The blacks of North Queensland, being, possibly, the 

 least of the races in a poetic sense, have but slight 

 regard for the interference of the stars in their poor little 

 affairs, and in this respect are saner than many a nation 

 which has given abundant proof of wisdom. One of 

 their beliefs is that meteors are baleful, though under 

 given conditions they derive from such phenomena 

 longed-for assurance. A meteor is described as "Star 

 run about." "That fella no good; him kiU'em man 1" 

 Yet in circumstances to be mentioned they find in a 

 meteor a sign that life has been restored to an individual 

 whom they have done to death. It is the opinion of 



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