Muraay Muyaay

Authors: Youla Azkarrula, ASE Tech Team

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Muraay and Muyaay are two different name for two different stars

Etymology and History

Muraay is Kamilaroi, and Muyaay is Euahlayi for the sulfur-crested cockatoo, who are the Pointer stars (Alpha Centauri and Hadar/Beta Centauri). They ended up in the constellation Crux when their tree, the Yarran, was dragged into the sky with the first man to die, and they are always chasing Yarran.

People use both stars and Yarran, Crux, for finding south.

They will give you directions where you go, and how to go home.

Mythology

In the Creation time, two men and a woman came from the red country and had been shown which plants they could eat to stay alive. They did this for a long time, but then a big drought came, and they were hungry. One man killed a wallaby, even though he was told by the other man that he should not, as he did not know the law of that totem (the wallaby). He and the woman ate some of it. The other man refused, and walked across the sandhills and the river until he came to a big white gum tree. He lay down and died there. A spirit saw that he did not break the law, and put him in the hollow of the tree, and then lifted the tree into the sky, followed by two white cockatoos screeching, because their roosting place was in the tree. The tree was placed in the southern sky, where it faded and only the eyes of the spirit and the man could be seen, forming the Southern Cross. The two cockatoos still fly after the Southern Cross, and are the Pointers. This is the story of the first death of man. The she-oak trees sigh in the wind, and the gum trees cry tears of blood (gum) to mourn for the first death of Aboriginal people.

The meaning of this story isː

• how the Southern Cross was created;
• why the gum tree bleeds a resin;
• why the she-oak sighs in the wind;
• the first death and the law about burial (in a tree);
• the law about not killing a totem animal;
• how the spirits take the people to the sky.

Reference

• References (general)