Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/47

 Rh skill, of mischief and wisdom also; he appears in the form of a serpent at their assemblies," like Asclepius. Mr. Ridley, of course, was uninitiated.

Now, if Mr. Ridley's negative evidence, which is early (tour of 1855), is accepted, if we are quite ready to believe that he never heard of Baiame as ruler at that date, why are we to reject his affirmative evidence of the same date about Baiame as a Maker or Creator? He knewthe language, he could write Kamilaroi prose, and, if his missionary bias led him to find, or feign, a Creator, why did it not lead him to find, or feign, a moral Ruler? One fancy or fiction was as easy, to a missionary, as the other.

We now arrive at a point in Mr. Hartland's argument which my mind broods fondly over; it is so rich in possibilities. Looked at in one way, Mr. Hartland might seem to be in a dilemma. Looked at in another, he might appear to have a choice between two theories, each of them seductive, "were t'other dear charmer away." The dilemma is this: Mr. Hartland accuses me of using expressions against which we must be on our guard, such as "Father in Heaven," "and many other expressions rhetorically used by Mr. Lang anent gods of the lower races. They convey to our minds reminiscences of Christian teaching of which the savage mind is guiltless" (p. 312). The savage mind is guiltless of Christian teaching, tout va bien! To be sure the savage mind has (like Christians) the conception of a Father, and that Father is in the Heaven, in the literal sense of the word. Mungan-ngaur = "Our Father;" his home in various versions is in, or above, the heavens. But the savage's mind is "guiltless of Christian teaching." So Mr. Hartland writes on page 312, while on page 302 he