Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/80

54 Manning's version is an excellent example of the unconscious evolution by white men of native ideas in a Christian direction, with which I have so sorely vexed the soul of Mr. Lang. Mr. Manning was not a missionary; but if he could not help colouring and distorting in a Christian direction, it is extremely likely that missionaries, whose minds were full of theological ideas and expressions, when they stumbled upon something in savage belief which bore a resemblance to these ideas (though a resemblance, it may be, superficial, or occasionally based on misunderstanding) would in expressing the story or belief in their own words unconsciously develop the resemblance they saw or fancied. But whether resemblances to Christian dogma be reported of savage belief by missionaries or other Europeans, I for one hesitate to admit them, until I have satisfied myself, not merely of the honesty (of that we need not ordinarily doubt) but of the competency of the witness—a competency not always to be measured simply by the length of time he has been in contact with the savage.

Oh! but, says Mr. Lang, "Mr. Manning's version of 1845" is "much corroborated by Mrs. Langloh Parker in 1898." Well, I have not space to examine Mrs. Langloh Parker's version of the myth in detail: I must content myself with mentioning a few of the differences I find in it. For her, Byamee is not "the God-head," but a man, "the mighty Wirreenun" (wizard or doctor), who has had a career on earth with other men, who has wives, one of whom shares his seat and has a will and powers of her own. In her account, "the Son of God" is not to be found, unless, as Mr. Lang suggests, in the solitary mysterious reference to "the All-seeing Spirit" who has nothing in her story to do with the judgement of the dead. According to her, Byamee has had two sons, but what has become of them does not appear; Bullimah, where he seems now to be, is beyond the top of a mountain called Oobi Oobi, perhaps "one of the Noondoo ridges" (which I take to be an