Kirindilyin (the dark-rainbow ancestress)

Kirindilyin is one of the Murinbata names — alongside Ngamur and Kulaitj — for the darkest band of the rainbow, recorded by W. E. H. Stanner in his account of the Rainbow Serpent at Port Keats. Where the brightest, blood-red band is identified with Kunmanggur, the dark band is conceived as a distinct, female being, represented as a black snake living in the sea. In some tellings she was reckoned older (kulaitj) than Kunmanggur and to have been married before she became his partner. She thus forms the sombre, feminine counterpart to the male Rainbow Serpent within the single phenomenon of the rainbow, and is the least elaborated of the named rainbow-beings in Stanner's record.

Domains

• rainbow and rain
• sea

Powers

• to appear as the dark band of the rainbow over the sea

Epithets

• NgamurW. E. H. Stanner, On Aboriginal Religion (Oceania Monograph No. 11, 1963), recording Ngamur as an alternative name of the dark rainbow-band (secondary)

Relations

• consort of: Kunmanggur (the Rainbow Serpent)Female counterpart and, in some Murinbata tellings, the wife of Kunmanggur, the two being the dark and bright bands of the one rainbow.W. E. H. Stanner, On Aboriginal Religion (Oceania Monograph No. 11, 1963) (secondary)

Sources

• Kirindilyin (also Ngamur) is the Murinbata name for the darkest band of the rainbow, a female ancestral being conceived as a black snake in the sea and paired with, or married to, Kunmanggur the bright Rainbow Serpent.: W. E. H. Stanner, On Aboriginal Religion (Oceania Monograph No. 11; Sydney: University of Sydney, 1963; repr. Sydney University Press, 2014) (secondary); Ira R. Buchler & Kenneth Maddock (eds.), The Rainbow Serpent: A Chromatic Piece (The Hague: Mouton, 1978) (secondary)