Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/42

16 understand it, remains unaffected. For to what does my argument tend? Merely to prove the existence, among low savage notions, of the ideas which I call "religious," such as the idea of a maker, a superhuman father, a judge, and so forth. The existence of these notions among low savages has constantly been denied. I demonstrate the fact that these notions do exist. That contradictory notions co-exist with them, that Daramulun is said to mean "lame leg," that he is said to "die," that he has wives, and so on, makes no kind of difference to me.

Mr. Hartland says: "Daramulun .... died; this eternal Creator with a game leg died, and his spirit (Bulabong) went up to the sky, where he has since lived with the ghosts." Now it is plain that an advanced thinker of the popular atheistic sort might state in a similar form of raillery the central idea of Christianity Perhaps, therefore, the Australians borrowed this doctrine—except the "game leg"—from missionaries.

I turn from Mr. Hartland's statement of Australian belief to that of Mr. Howitt, who is our chief source of knowledge. Mr. Howitt (before he was initiated) wrote: "Tharamulun, after teaching his people the art which they knew [know?], and establishing their social ordinances, died, and his spirit (Bulabong) went up to the sky, where he has since lived with the ghosts" (Journal of the Anhropological Institute, vol. xiii., p. 194).

This passage I inadvertently overlooked. If this be the general belief, namely that Daramulun died, whereas Bunjil and Baiame were only translated, I shall look on Daramulun as a "ghost-god," and as a triumph for Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Grant Allen. But (after he was initiated) Mr. Howitt wrote: "There is clearly a belief in a Great Spirit, or rather an anthropomorphic Supernatural Being, the 'Master' of all," and so forth (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xiii., p. 458). I scarcely think that "an anthropomorphic Supernatural Being," as such