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38
in all cases, it is looked upon in the light of an ornament,
especially when some red colour is woven into it. This ring
is put on from below up, and the woman will often ex-
perience great difficulty in getting it over her hips: it
is quite a labour sometimes.
54.55. Deformations etc. Nothing beyond what has been mentioned concerning the tooth-avulsion (sect. 22), and
the nose-piercing (ibid) & the body-scars (sect. 51). No
practice of circumcision or castration.
56. Music. At the corrobboree, the tintinnabulation may be
effected by the boys (1) clapping with the hands and varying
the note according to the concavity of the palms (2) striking two sticks, or a wommera and a stick, together. (3) stamping
with the feet: by the women, banging the "fork" with the
open hand clutched on the back of the wrist with the
other.
The only musical wind instrument they have is the yē-kē
yē-kē (the second y being scarcely sounded), a name
common to all the dialects met with in the district included
by Cooktown, The Laura, Palmerville, Maytown, Byenstown,
and the Daintree. It is said to have been introduced onto
the Bloomfield from the gulf country through the Kokowana-speaking
blacks via the Laura, a very long time ago - long before
the oldest living one at Wyalla was born - and that
from here the Daintree aboriginals got their first instrument.
The "yeke yeke"s in use here are simply hollow hardwood
saplings about from 7 to 9 feet long, which taken from
31/2 or even 4 inches at the larger distal extremity, to
about 2 or 21/2 inches at the smaller proximal, or mouth,
end. The sap wood is generally cut off, leaving a shell
about 1/4 inch thick, but the only polish it gets is the
constant handling. The blacks here never go to the
trouble of charring out a sapling as they can get
plenty of hollow ones: neither are they particular as
to straightness as the ones that are naturally hollow
are rarely straight. Before steel tomahawks were