Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/534

492 which will also give him assistance in time of trouble or danger—is a sort of alter ego, as it were Re 'High Gods' dying, our Byamee certainly did not according to our authorities, nor any other native 'High God' that I can get on the tracks of; he went to where he came from. As to Daramulun, I only know him as being to other tribes what Wallahgooroonbooan is to ours, superintendent but not instigator of the boorah—that Byamee did.

"It seems to me that it was only as he left each tribe that Byamee instituted the Boorah, before which he only showed his power by miracles. "Yours sincerely,

It seems to me, from this account, that Mrs. Langloh Parker's method of acquiring information is as good as it can be. Much the same was the process of Sahagun, in Anahuac, soon after the conquest by Cortès. Her observations on the hereditary totem, which a man may eat, and the personal, or given, yunbeai (nagual or manitou), which he may not eat, with the myth of Byamee as a collection of totems, are novel as far as I am aware. I think we may discount the suggestion that Mrs. Langloh Parker's aged informant was telling to her manufactured folklore, in return for the kindnesses which, no doubt, she is likely to have conferred upon an ancient invalid. However, if the opposite opinion be preferred, I fear we shall soon be of the mind of an Oxford historian, who told me lately that no anthropological evidence was of any value.

Mrs. Langloh Parker was also kind enough to give me a full account of a native "spiritualistic séance," attended by herself, another lady, and the savage seeress. It was very curious and interesting. Neither Mrs. Langloh Parker nor myself regards the events, at present, as proving more than the extraordinary skill and adroitness of even female wirreenuns, or "wise folk." But our science might be interested in the arts, of hitherto unexplained nature, by which these persons gain and keep up their social ascendancy. This idea, doubtless, is unscientific and superstitious.

The evidence, however, as to the indigenous belief in such beings as Byamee and his ministers deserves research. If we do not make it at once, if we recline on talk about missionary influence and native mendacity, we are never likely to ascertain the