Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/44

 18 Mr. Howitt. Mr. Tylor remarks: "Howitt finds them [certain other Australian deities] treated as corresponding or equivalent to Baiame, the Creator . . . . " (Tylor, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1891, p. 295). All these attributes suffice, in my view, to furnish a deity far more respectable than the Australians are usually credited with; a being much on the level of the Wintu Olelbis, described in Mr. Curtin's recent book on American Creation Myths. The existence of degrading myths about the same being does not, to my mind, annihilate the fact that the higher beliefs are also part of primitive theology.

"Where is the distinction between religious belief and myth?" Mr. Hartland asks. Why, in my sense, just there. The immortal Zeus who punishes wrong is religious, as is the Daramulun who punishes wrong, "looking down from the sky." The dead Daramulun, the dead Zeus, are mythical. From the moral and religious aspect springs all religion, even if the religious and moral aspect be but another myth. From the dead Zeus, the destroyed Daramulun, springs nothing of human importance, whereas religion—a myth or not a myth—is undeniably of human importance.

Having done his best to demolish the character of Daramulun, Mr. Hartland now falls upon that of Baiame (Folk-Lore, pp. 300-305). He derives his evidence from Mr. Matthews, or, in part, from Mr. Crawley, the officer of police, who is so far from being a linguist that he says: "Many of the blacks who attended this Bora (1894?) could speak fairly good English, and were able to understand the purport of questions and give suitable replies." This Bora was under English patronage, or charity, and the old and the children were fed on European supplies. At these late rites of 1894, Baiame has a wife, sons on her begotten, and so on. Very well, I have evidence fifty years earlier that Baiame was reckoned celibate and had an unbegotten, practically omniscient son. He