|
|
Category - FINE PRINTS FROM THE BLANASI COLLECTION
Prints from the Blanasi Collection: Contact us to purchase this item. David Blanasi In the beginning of time an evil spirit called Namorrodor came up out of the sea on the north coast of the Coburg Penninsula with his friend Gurrgurldanj, the scrub fowl man. They travelled through Western Arnhem Land, then crossed the East Alligator River and went down to Jim Jim Creek in Kakadu, where they climbed up a near by escarpment to a significant site called Balbbun. A female spirit called Algaihgo lived there. She was very attractive, and both men fell in love with her. She found it hard to decide between the two, so she left them and retreated to a secret place further back in the escarpment. Namorrodor could not forget her, and he made Balbun one of his dreaming sites, the location of which is well known to local people and avoided by them at night. Several of his dreaming places are located near Oenpelli and in the escarpment of the stone country. Namorrodor is very tall with long legs and arms, but instead of fingers and toes he has claws at the end of his extremities. He only ventures out at night, when he runs through the bush with his long hair whistling in the wind. Children crying around the camp fires at night are warned that the spirit man will get them. Sometimes he can be seen for a few seconds streaking across the sky, and when Aboriginal people see a falling star they know the Namorrodor is rushing to the place where someone is dying. He rips open the chest and pulls out the heart and spirit. The brighter the star the more important the person. This is an important person and there are two falling stars. If a man dies during daylight, Namorrodor cannot go to him, since he is only a creature of the night, so instead he sends one of his agents, the sea eagle or brown falcon to bring the dying man's shadow to him. As a rule he does not kill healthy people unless they make him very angry, but he will act as an agent for the salt water crocodile or the rainbow serpent who desire the death of a certain person. They indicate to him the one they wish to kill, and at night he strikes that person with a long fighting club, incapacitating him so that he cannot escape the creature when it arrives to kill him. Children that go down to the river at night to fish are warned not to touch the catch of any man fishing nearby because it might be Namorrodor, and fish is his favorite food. When he has caught a few, he threads them on a yam vine and drags it to his dreaming place. Once some young boys who were fishing at night without success followed the spirit man and cut the vine in half, racing off to their cave in the escarpments to share the fish with their parents. Namorrodor flew to the cave and rolled down some heavy boulders blocking the entrance and imprisoning the family inside. The plant in this picture is the bush potato (gungun).
|
