King Bungaree's Pyalla is a collection of stories told to Mary A Fitzgerald by 'Bungaree', and perhaps other Aboriginal people, during her childhood. It was one of the first such collections published for children.
The collection of stories is quite clearly intended for non-Indigenous children. Indeed the cover shows a stately Aboriginal man, wearing a breast-plate engraved 'King Bungaree', speaking with a group of well-dressed non-Aboriginal children who appear eager to hear his stories. Wright and Collins-Gearing (p 34) explain that Fitzgerald wrote her translations using the contemporary conventions of fantasy literature and wove them into fairy tale narratives. Fitzgerald's interpretations of the Aboriginal tales could be viewed as fanciful and they reinforced the social mores and hierarchies prevalent at the time. In 'Owingee' the white 'high born' farm mistress (Mrs Peverill) takes the 'lowly' Aboriginal lady (Owingee), wife of the tribe leader, under her wing but their separate stations in life are reinforced (Wright, Collins-Gearing p 34). However, one could also draw out the shared humanity of these two women, as Owingee secretly defies the men-folk of her tribe to return Mrs Peverill's son Robin, who had been claimed by the Tribe as a 'payment' months earlier, but had been feared drowned by his mother (Fitzgerald, pp 46-52).
Fitzgerald's work precedes K Langloh-Parker's Australian Legendary Tales (1896) and is simpler in presentation, however Saxby (p 68) contends that as Australian Legendary Tales remained in print for much longer than King Bungaree's Pyalla, 'it is a better collection of folk-literature'.
It is interesting to note that Fitzgerald follows practices in respect to the publication of Indigenous knowledge which for the time was unusual but is now standard protocol; she includes a glossary of Aboriginal words within which Pyalla is defined as an oration, talk or conversation. She identifies her Aboriginal source (or informant) as a 'Black King' and makes the point in her preface that the material is intended for a non-Aboriginal audience. She also recognises that the Aboriginal people were the traditional owners of the land that was commandeered by colonisation.
In her dedication and preface, Fitzgerald indicates a concern that the Aboriginal people were at risk of dying out, and their knowledge with them, and states that her stories are intended as a record of Aboriginal folklore for future generations of non-Aboriginal children. Her understandable belief was common amongst many writers (including K Langloh-Parker), anthropologists and story-tellers who found this a strong impetus to record such stories. As society changed such records were criticised and side-lined for their patronising approach but have subsequently been studied in conjunction with other records, by Aboriginal communities seeking to reconstruct the stories of their ancestors.
King Bungaree's Pyalla was included among a gift of books presented to the Duke and Duchess of York in 1901 for their children from some of the children of South Australia, and therefore was deemed a suitable, contemporary and representative compilation for royal children to read.
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