Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/79

 Rh here to be discounted. Unless we discount liberally, the account is, in the language of Mr. Lang's friend, "quite worthless." It is not an accurate scientific account. It is beyond doubt coloured and distorted. Mr. Manning has "unconsciously evolved" what he wormed out of his savage informant into a pale copy—caricature, if you please—of Christian ideas. He has presented us not with savage ideas, but with what he thinks they would be if expressed in the pompous and technical terms of Christian theologians. When he descends to particulars, he becomes more valuable. " Their belief in God's creation of His own Son was explained to me thus by the intelligent native from whom I derived my chief information. 'Boyma,' on his own creation, feeling lonesome, wished for a son after his own likeness." (Note here the capitals, the use of "God" for Boyma, the phrase "on his own creation," suggestive of a mild Arianism, and the phrase "after his own likeness.") "He observed in the firmament a liquid, resembling blood, which, reaching with his hand, he placed in a crystal oven, and in a short time the Son of God was born, a being resembling God and Man." Here, in spite of similar phraseology, we discover a myth familiar to Zulus and North American Indians, of which I have given examples elsewhere. If we had it entire, and in a form more like that in which it was really told, its true character would be still more apparent. I call it at all events a myth, and a very savage one. Mr. Lang does not quote it. I regret this, because it appears to be part of the sacred belief of the tribe referred to by Mr. Manning, and it would be interesting to know whether Mr. Lang designates it as "myth" or "religion." If I had had Mr. Manning's Paper before me, I should not have said that Baiame's "biblical characteristics constantly expanded down to" 1878. But that error does not affect the main question; and Mr.