Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/532

 490 Miscellanea.

in a son or sons of his, who undertake for him the intelligence department, and generally relieve him of most of the trouble o. administration ?

My own opinion about these beliefs is freely stated in the new edition oi Myth, Ritual, and ReIigio?i, in The Making of Religion, and in my recent reply to Mr. Hartland. The evidence which I have cited is enough for me. But such revolutionary opinions are naturally not acceptable, and, with Mr. Hartland, I am anxious for a new inquiry. This can only be pursued in Australia, but possibly some member of the Society has leisure to consult the various proceedings of Australian learned societies. There are also Catholic sources, such as The Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, 1839, ^"d onwards. These are the continuation of the Lettres Edif antes, the later volumes of which ought to be ex- amined. Then we have the Wesleyan Missiotiary Notices of 1 81 6 and onwards. There are the English Digest of Records of the S.P.G., 1793, and onwards. I do not expect to find much of value before the beginnings of Mr. Threlkeld's work in 1828; his writings I have myself examined, with most of the books of travel since 1820. In Australia itself we may perhaps invite the aid of well-known anthropologists. Unfortunately Messrs. Spencer and Gillen only devote a footnote to what they call "the great spirit," Twanyikira. About him there cannot but be myths, even if he be only an undeveloped bugbear, or a god shrunk to a bugbear. His region is so inaccessible that information will be hard to procure.

Meanwhile I venture to print some notes of Mrs. Langloh Parker's on Byamee, concerning whom see her two volumes of Australian Legends. As is well known, Mr. Greenwell, followed by Mr. Ridley, derives the word Baiame (which Mr. Ridley found current in 1855) from baia, "to make." Mrs. Langloh Parker, in her glossary, renders Byamee " Big Man." I asked her to look into the subject, and into Byamee generally, and what follows is her obliging reply to my queries.

"Bangate, Walgatt, N.S.W., '■^January 2,0th.

" As to the Byamee flower legend, it was told to me first in Euah- layi by an old black man. My method for hearing legends is this.