Bahloo

In Australian Aboriginal mythology of southeast Australia, particularly among the Kamilaroi people of northern New South Wales, Bahloo is moon man. He keeps three deadly snakes as pets.

Myths

One aboriginal legend tells of how Yhi, the sun, courted Bahloo, but he refused her advances. The myth says that this is why the sun chased the moon across the sky. Yhi threatened the spirits who held up the sky that if they let him escape down to earth, she would plunge the world into darkness.^[1]

Nevertheless, Bahloo is sometimes seen walking on the earth in Australian myth. One such myth seeks to explain both man's mortality and the hatred between snakes and men, much as does the Judeo-Christian story of the Garden of Eden. In the tale, Bahloo takes his snakes (calling them his 'dogs') out for a walk at night. He comes upon a group of men and asks them to carry the snakes across a river for him. They were afraid, and refused, so he did it himself, with two snakes coiled around each arm and one around his neck. He threw a piece of bark on the water, which floated, and a stone, which sank. He declared that he was like the bark, always rising again, but that the men would be like the stone, and sink to the bottom when they were dead. The men, who had always feared the snakes, now hated them and killed them whenever they saw one. Bahloo always sent more, to remind the people that they had not done what he asked.^[2]

References