(M178) But why among the Dieri of Central Australia should the power of attracting rain and so ensuring a supply of food be specially attributed to a young man whose back has just been scored and whose wounds are still raw? Perhaps the reason may be that the blood dripping from the gashes is thought to resemble rain and therefore to be endowed with a magical potency of drawing showers from the clouds. The conjecture is confirmed by the observation that the Dieri actually do bleed themselves avowedly for the purpose of making rain, and they are not the only people in Australia and elsewhere who have resorted to this singular mode of putting an end to a drought.(616) Altogether the foregoing evidence seems to hint that the whole virtue of the bull-roarer resides, as its English name implies, in its voice, and that its original significance was simply that of a magical instrument for causing thunder, wind, and rain.(617) When these natural phenomena came to be personified as spirits, the sound of the bull-roarer was naturally interpreted as their voice. (M179) Among the tribes on the Brisbane River in Queensland the weird sound of the bull-roarers swung at initiation was believed by the women and children to be made by the wizards in swallowing the boys and bringing them up again as young men. The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River said that the boy met a ghost, who killed him and brought him to life again as a young man. Among the natives on the Lower Lachlan and Murray Rivers it was Thrumalun (Daramulun) who was thought to slay and resuscitate the novices.(618) In the Arunta tribe of Central Australia, at the moment when the lads are being circumcised, the bull-roarer sounds in the darkness all round the ceremonial ground; and the awestruck women, listening in the distance, believe that it is the voice of a spirit called Twanyirika, who lives in wild and inaccessible regions and only comes out when a youth is initiated. They think that the spirit enters the body of the lad after the operation of circumcision has been performed and carries him away into the bush, keeping him there till his wound is healed. While the newly circumcised youth is out in the wilds, carefully secluded from the sight of the women and children, he constantly sounds the bull-roarer. When he has recovered from the wound, the spirit leaves him and he returns to camp an initiated, or rather partially initiated, man. He has learned, at all events, the secret of Twanyirika; for no sooner is he circumcised than an elder brother comes up to him, and placing in his hands a bundle of sacred sticks or stones (_churinga_), says, “Here is Twanyirika, of whom you have heard so much. They are _churinga_ and will help you to heal quickly; guard them well, or else you and your mothers and sisters will be killed.”(619)