Songlines

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For other uses, see Songlines (disambiguation).

Songlines (or "Yiri" in the Walpiri language) is a cultural concept in Australian Aboriginal mythology relating to Dreamtime. Oral lore and storytelling for the Indigenous Australian manifested in Songlines - an intricate series of song cycles that identified landmarks and other items and tracking (hunting) mechanisms for navigation. These songs often described how the features of the land were created and named during the Dreamtime. By singing the songs in the appropriate order, indigenous Australians could navigate vast distances often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interiority. To the indigenous Australians, songlines also confer a title and deed to the holder or the keeper of the song (or Dreamtime story) and entails an inherent obligation and reciprocity with the land.

Songlines is sometimes used as a synonym for ley lines to denote the Earth's subtle energy currents - known as ley lines in the United Kingdom, naga or snake lines in India, dragon lines ("dragon current", or lung-mei) in China.

In his 1987 book, The Songlines British novelist and travel writer, Bruce Chatwin describes the songlines as:

"...the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known to Europeans as 'Dreaming-tracks' or 'Songlines'; to the Aboriginals as the 'Footprints of the Ancestors' or the 'Way of the Law'.

Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic being who wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path- birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes- and so singing the world into existence."''