One day the young sisters insulted the old Virinun so much that when they were hunting in the thickets, he turned them into Yuaya, or frogs.
When several days passed and they still did not return to the camp, their mother and relatives thought that they had been kidnapped by men of a foreign tribe.
Shortly before the relatives became concerned about the absence of the girls, it rained and almost all traces were washed away. Only traces of Udulaya, or the round stone that causes rain, remain; in rainy weather this stone is always outside the house. He harbored the spirits of past rainmakers and could move, as evidenced by his footprints. In addition, when before the rain he settled in a new camp, you could hear his joyful laughter in anticipation of the mud. No one touched Udulai, but he often changed the location of his camp...
Several days had passed since the girls disappeared, but their mother still did not lose hope of finding them. She thought that they, noticing the approaching rain, built a shelter in the bushes and decided to wait out the bad weather there. She walked in the direction the girls had gone and began calling out to them loudly. A voice was heard in response. She hurried to where it had come from and called again. Again the answer was heard close to her. She looked around, but didn't see anyone. She screamed again, and then an answering scream came again from the tuft of grass at her feet.
She decided that it was the orange-blue Nura-gogo beetle that was screaming, which always answered the Nunga-barra Daen when one of them was in the bush. In the end, the woman lost hope of finding her daughters and, weak and hungry, began to look around for food.
Soon she saw the tracks of Yuaya ground frogs. The woman began to dig up frogs. They were beautiful, big Yuayas, the biggest she had ever seen.
- What abundant food I will have! - she exclaimed.
In response, there was a very pitiful cry of frogs, which seemed to be looking at her intently. Ignoring this, she continued:
- I think I'll eat them here. I am very hungry, and if I take them to the camp, others will ask me for frogs.
When she bent down to pick them up, the frogs screamed in a voice that was not their own. They looked at her pitifully, and she realized that something was wrong here. The woman threw the frog she was holding in her hand, and then thought: “Is it worth paying attention to the cry of the frog? It would be stupid to leave such good food here.”
And she bent down again and took the frogs.
Then the screams of the frogs intensified. It seemed to her that they were shouting: “You shouldn’t eat us. You are our mother. We are the girls you lost. Old Wirinun turned us into frogs because we laughed at the totem of his tribe, saying that its back was as humpbacked as the back of an emu. You can't eat us."
The croaking was so loud and the woman was so frightened that she turned and hurried through the bushes towards the camp. The pitiful cry was still ringing in her ears.
She went straight to the old Virinun and asked:
- Are you the one who turned my girls into Yuaya, who are still crying in the bushes?
- Yes, I did it! he replied, proud that the woman had seen proof of his power.
- Why did you do this? Why do you make me grow old without daughters to take care of me?
“Wasn’t it you who chose their father over me?” Why should I think about you now? May their father make them human again. He's probably stronger than me since you chose him. As your daughters said, I am but a hunchback, like my totem Dinewan. You know well that to mock a man's totem is to wage war against his tribe, but I do not wage war. I have only turned your daughters into those whose voices no one pays attention to. No longer will they be able to mock the back of Dinevan, my totem. Eat them, woman. After all, Yuaya is good food.
So he mocked the woman who despised him in her youth.
- How can I, a mother, eat my children? What are you talking about? Alas! Someone will probably find and eat them. Only you can save them. Please change them again so that no one can eat them. They will never laugh at Dinevan. I will never despise you. I will live in your dardur forever.
- Why should I take you into my dardur now that you are old? - And he turned away and continued to carve something on his boomerang with the help of a possum tooth.
“I beg you, change them so that no one can eat them.” I will give you my great-grandfather's Duri millstone forever. Nobody but the rightful owner can use it, because then he starts grumbling. I will give you this stone, which in ancient times belonged to the Virinuns of my father’s family. Of all the millstones, only he has a voice.
- Bring me Duri, and I will change your girls so that no one will ever be able to eat them.
And the woman brought the most precious thing she had - the magic stone of her ancestors, which grumbled when she laid it at the feet of the virinun.
“Now go into the thickets,” said Virinun. “There you will find your children and see that I kept my promise.” Already now they are such that no one can eat them.
The woman went to where she saw Uaya. She walked in the hope of seeing her children again. But when she arrived at the place, she again found frogs.
- Oh my daughters, my daughters! Will I never see you as you were before?
She cried loudly, as if mourning the dead. There was no answer from Yuaya, and they did not look at her. Crying, she bent down to pick up one of them.
- Virinun deceived me! - she exclaimed. “Of course, no one will eat them - after all, they have become stone.”
This was indeed the case. Some of them turned out to be made of simple gray stone, others - with a green stripe, like frogs. Her daughters will forever remain stone, as happened with the frogs dug up by Baiame's wives Birra-nulu and Kannan-baley. They were set to cook before the women made the fateful leap into the Kurijil spring. From there the Kurrias carried the women down the Narran River. Baiame followed them, turning the food they found into stones to mark the place forever.
Mother knew that these stone frogs still lie at the source to this day. By the will of the evil Virinun, those who were her girls also became the same.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru