Queen of the Dark Things by C. Robert Cargill

Author:C. Robert Cargill [Cargill, C. Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062190475
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 34

SONGLINES

AN EXCERPT BY DR. THADDEUS RAY, PH.D., FROM HIS BOOK DREAMSPEAKING, DREAMWALKING, AND DREAMTIME: THE WORLD ON THE OTHER SIDE OF DOWN UNDER

Ownership of a song in a songline is a complicated and alien thing to the uninitiated. When the heir to a songline is born, his birthright is to inherit one. He will learn, through drilling and memorization, the names of his ancestors, the history of his tribe and the surrounding area, and a portion of the song to a songline. Others will come and ask to borrow his song; he, in turn, will generously loan it out. It cannot be bought, traded, or sold, and the heir can never be rid of it. He can only sing it and let it be sung by others.

The origin of a songline finds its roots in survival. The bulk of Australia is a hostile wilderness many liken to a wasteland, with weather patterns that vary wildly from year to year. In order to survive, the Aborigines had to become nomadic. In turn, these nomadic practices inspired a number of philosophies about ownership that simply don’t translate easily to the West. To these nomads, property was fluid. The land provided, and since people needed to carry everything they owned from one place to another from time to time, the idea arose that property was something of a burden. Thus one didn’t want to hold on to one thing for too long, lest it weigh one down. This began as a necessity, but continued as a philosophy. If one possessed an object for too long, it could weigh down one’s very life, and thus one should never be too attached to anything, being willing to trade it away at any moment.

At the same time, a tribe might find itself in a place overabundant with one type of provision, but short of another. For example one might find oneself in the woods filled with fowl and game, but short on fruit and ocher. The solution was of course to trade. But since all of the tribes were nomadic, knowing where resources were located or abundant was tricky. So trade routes emerged. The Aborigines imagined them as lines, and they learned them and passed information about them along in the form of song.

These songs described the route to a location, as well as contained the history of those locations. Through these songlines tribes would pass information, news, goods, even trinkets in a way to be connected with other peoples around the continent. But what began as a song describing the rock formation one was looking for to find a billabong became a story about a group of men who fought and died there. Later would come a verse about the couple who fell in love there and the hero who would be born of that love. Later still the song would tell the tale of mythic creatures said to haunt it. Over the course of generations a simple method of learning how to get from one place to another became the medium that contained the history of an entire continent.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.