Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/55

 Rh Manning's version of 1845 is far the most "expanded" that I know. And, like Mr. Matthews, Mr. Manning was not a missionary.

Here, then, in 1845, we have a Baiame legend not expanded by missionaries between 1845- 1878. I may observe that Mr. Howitt in 1885 greatly "expanded" his previous account of Kurnai religion given in 1881. Mr. Howitt had not become a missionary in the interval; he had only acquired more information by being initiated. Knowledge does expand occasionally, apart from missionary fancy. Mr. Hartland then conceives it to be reasonable to infer that Europeans and natives under European influence have "unconsciously evolved" the points in Baiame's story most resembling the Christian conception of the Creator. Yet these natives "are guiltless of Christian teaching." This, we saw, is less than logical. Moreover, they had "evolved" all this as a matter of secret knowledge confined to the initiated, as early as 1845, in five years from the first known mention of Baiame. Is that very easy to believe? Then, apparently, they disevolved the belief down to the point at which it reaches Mr. Crawley and Mr. Matthews (who is not a missionary), and who does not say that Baiame did not make "the country." But they kept the form of 1845 for Mrs. Langloh Parker, who is not a missionary either. She began her studies as a disciple of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Her savage friends converted her from that position, as she is kind enough to inform me. I therefore do not see why we should reduce the Baiame legend to the form reported by Mr Crawley to Mr. Matthews, though he is not a missionary. Nor, of course, do I admit that missionaries have "expanded" the legend since 1845, because the version of 1845 is more "expanded" than any