The Legend of the Marryalyan
The Warramirri people used to occupy a large group of islands in the Arafura Sea off the northern coast of Australia. They were a clan of deep water seafarers trading with the Indonesians from whom they obtained their great canoes. Their islands were the northern gateway to Australia, and after the white men came they named them the English company and the Wessel Islands. They are now empty and the Warramirri live on Elcho Island, and while some of them would like to go back to their old way of life, they can no longer get canoes from Indonesia and they would need many boats.
They do, however, retain a great wealth of mythology. They have many stories about one of their major gods named Marryalyan, who was possessed of infinite inventiveness. He lived under the sea and through the power of his breathing boiled up the vapour which makes the clouds, the weather and the storms. He invented living creatures commencing with minute particles in the sea, pinching them together to make different forms until he had filled the ocean. He encouraged some creatures to emerge from the sea and take up life on land, and from them he developed all the different types of living beings. He himself, in one of his lesser forms, would assume the likeness of different creatures particularly that of a snake to enable him to go unnoticed amongst his creations. Man too he developed giving him special powers including those of reasoning and considerable control over his own destiny, as well as an afterlife.
The two snake motif arises out of the story that as time passed the spirits of the ancestors, concerned at what was going on in the world of the living, sent one of their number in the form of a snake to report on the situation. When he came back they were much disturbed at his account, and sent another to check. When the second returned his story was different from that of the first.
The two were therefore placed one opposite the other and asked to reason out why it was that, although they had seen the same things, their stories were different, and the ancestors listened. Out of the discussion and the argument the truth emerged, and this, say the Warramirri, is a principle of life everywhere, review brings doubt but good sense emerges after discussion and so people learn.
The two snake motif showing one going up and one coming down is very ancient and may even antedate the serpent of Aesculapius. The story seemed so apt for a multidisciplinary society such as COSA that an approach was made to the Warramirri and the elders have most generously allowed us to adopt the two snakes as the official COSA emblem.