Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/535

Rh truth at all. Even now we may come too late with our inquiries, and students will be left to their personal bias in considering the evidence already extant. The evidence impresses me the more from its coincidence with what is reported by early American explorers and missionaries, by Mr. Man from the Andaman Islands, and with abundant African evidence. If we are to reject all this, we must, I think, decide that all the witnesses had the same prepossessions, while probably all the natives had a turn for an identical kind of mendacity. But, if once we admit this, anthropological evidence even to the facts which suit our theory, will be considerably damaged.

After sending Mrs. Langloh Parker's notes to the Editor, I received another letter from her, of May 12. The gist of them is that "old Hippi" (who is confirmed by Yndda Dulleebah, the very aged black who told of Byamee's personal collection of totems) "is unshaken in his original statement that Byamee was not born nor did he die. He came from his sky camp, where he was alone with his son, Bailah Burrah, not born of woman, but made, they do not know how. He did not bring this son with him when he travelled about, but on earth he (Byamee) got two wives eventually; he had them when he came here, but there are no gross stories about Byamee that I can get at.

"The Gayandy spirit,—sometimes called Wallah Gooroonbooan,—had a local habitation provided for it by Byamee, after some failures. Hence the confusion in the case of the Kamilaroi Daramulun, which is the Kamilaroi [Wiraijuri?], equivalent for our Gayandy spirit. It was the first Gayandy made who ate the faces of the initiates; seeing which Byamee changed him into a huge piggiebillah-(porcupine)-shaped animal, spineless, but with fur, now known as Nahgul, a dreaded devii. Then Byamee made stone 'churinga' as Gayandy." [I understand that Gayandy originally, and before his punishment, uttered his Voice, a mighty whirring sound, at the Mysteries. But, after his punishment, Byamee attempted a mechanical imitation of the Voice, by contriving stone Churinga.] "But Byamee found the stone Churinga too heavy—none are to be seen now—then made wooden ones, which are still used " [What follows here is a statement of Mrs. Langloh Parker's opinion that "confusion of names leads to various scandals" about the mythical beings.]