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The Thing in the Tree

The Yara-ma-yha-who is often described as a small, red, frog-like humanoid creature, with an enormous head, a wide toothless mouth, and sucker-like appendages on its hands and feet. Its body is unnatural from the outset, evoking something both childlike, absurd and deeply menacing.

Its preferred habitat is the fig tree. The weary traveler, escaping heat beneath its branches, unknowingly places themselves directly beneath danger. It drains blood using the suckers on its fingers and toes, attaching itself to the body in a manner more parasitic than predatory.

***Dreamtime***: also referred to as the Dreaming or Tjukurrpa, which means “to see and understand the law” in the Arrernte language ,is a fundamental concept in Australian Aboriginal culture that encompasses a worldview connecting the human, physical, and sacred realms. It represents the beliefs, knowledge, and values of Aboriginal peoples, often shared through storytelling, art, dance, and ceremonies. Dreamtime stories convey the Creation myths and the ongoing relationship between the Ancestor Spirits and the land, illustrating how these spirits shaped the world and established connections among people and their environment. // Image: Source

After partially draining its victim, however, the Yara-ma-yha-who does something even stranger. Rather than simply kill, it swallows the person whole. It then drinks water, falls asleep, and later regurgitates the victim. The prey emerges alive, but altered, described as shorter and redder than before. This process repeats over successive encounters until the victim becomes shorter and shorter, eventually transformed into another Yara-ma-yha-who. Some say after the third time.

It is active during the day, not at night. According to legend, one possible means of surviving an encounter is to play dead until sunset, exploiting the creature’s daytime habits.

***David Unaipon:*** David Unaipon (1872-1967) was an Aboriginal Australian preacher, inventor, and writer who has been widely credited as the first Aboriginal published author from Point McLeay Mission in South Australia. During the late 1920s Unaipon was frequently described as among the best-known Aboriginal people in Australia and was often called upon by the Australian government to act as the sole spokesperson for the country’s Indigenous population.

Child Warning and Cultural Function

Like many folkloric beings, the Yara-ma-yha-who likely served practical as well as spiritual purposes. Recorded traditions suggest the story may have been used to warn children against wandering, misbehavior, or resting in dangerous places alone.

***The Collector of Tales:*** After David Unaipon wrote his book, an alleged misunderstanding developed between the author and his publisher. The result was that Unaipon’s collected folklore was published in 1930 by William Ramsay Smith, a Scottish doctor, who presented Unaipon’s work as his own, almost word for word, in Myths & Legends of the Australian Aboriginals. Unaipon’s original manuscript, Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines, was finally published, three-quarters of a century late, in 2006.

Scholars and commentators have proposed various speculative inspirations for the Yara-ma-yha-who. Could it perhaps have come with Malay settlers telling about the tarsier primate from Southeast Asia? Or is it perhaps a story spinning on the Thylacoleo carnifex, a carnivorous marsupial that dropped onto its prey from the tree tops.

And somewhere, in the oldest corners of story, where sunlight burns and fig branches sway without wind, there remains the possibility that not every red thing in the leaves is fruit.

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