Liru
Liru is the venomous-snake ancestral being of the Uluru Tjukurpa, the antagonist of Kuniya. A war party of Liru men travelled from the west and, on reaching the rock, fell upon and killed the young Kuniya nephew. The marks of their advance are read in the pocked and scalloped stone of Uluru's south-western face, where their spears and shields are said to have struck; a rounded boulder near the base is identified as a Liru shield. When Kuniya took her revenge, one Liru warrior was struck dead at the Mutitjulu waterhole. Sources sometimes render Liru collectively as the Liru people and sometimes single out the slain warrior Wati Liru; the being embodies the poisonous king-brown and mulga snakes of the desert and stands as the archetypal aggressor in the paired snake mythology of Ayers Rock.
Domains
- serpents and venom
- warfare and raiding
Powers
- raid and kill as venomous warriors
Epithets
- Wati Liru — Liru Man / Venomous-Snake ManParks Australia, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, 'The Kuniya and Liru stories' (primary)
Relations
- enemy: KuniyaThe Liru raiders killed Kuniya's nephew and were met by her lethal vengeance at Mutitjulu.Mountford, C. P. (1965), Ayers Rock: Its People, Their Beliefs and Their Art, pp. 30-45 (secondary)
Sources
- Liru are the venomous-snake ancestral men who came from the west, killed Kuniya's nephew, and fought the Kuniya at Uluru.: Mountford, C. P. (1965), Ayers Rock: Its People, Their Beliefs and Their Art, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, pp. 30-45 (secondary); Layton, Robert (1986), Uluru: An Aboriginal History of Ayers Rock, AIAS, Canberra (secondary)