Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/112

102 remarks on the phonology of the dialects, his analysis of the grammar, must all prove of value to inquirers. Some of his materials are perhaps not very trustworthy, though it may be doubted whether he had much choice in the matter. He has also been hampered by want of a standard system of transcription of the native sounds. The indeterminate character of many of these sounds is a familiar phenomenon to every student of philology, and has been properly emphasised by Mr. Mathew. Our haphazard transcription has obscured the relations existing between many words, especially in cases of indeterminate pronunciation, and it often renders identification difficult. He makes use to some extent of Curr's lists of words, but he does not cite Eyre's. Reasons for not using Eyre's lists may be conjectured. It would, however, have been satisfactory to have them given, or at least some critical remarks upon the lists. Considering the scarcity of his materials, Mr. Mathew has made a strong case for the similarity between the dialects of Victoria and the Tasmanian, amounting to a fair presumption of essential unity of language. Trained philological study is urgently wanted on the whole subject of the Australian tongues.

The book derives its title from the names of the two exogamous classes into which the tribes in Central and Northern Victoria are divided. An analogous division subsists practically all over the continent, frequently distinguished by names having an equivalent meaning, or drawn from those of some classes of objects in the external world. Mr. Howitt suggests that they were originally totem-names. Mr. Mathew goes further. He ventures upon the theory that these two primary classes were two races which met and fought, and at last amalgamated in Australia. The native traditions of the contest between the Eaglehawk and the Crow he regards as a narrative of the relations between the two races, transmuted into the terms of mythology. There is a good deal to be urged in favour of this theory. But Mr. Mathew has hardly wrought it out with systematic and exhaustive accuracy. We want a map, showing, so far as present knowledge extends, the range of the Eaglehawk and Crow as divisional names, and of the traditions relative to the ancient contest between them; showing, moreover, the range not merely of parallel divisions, but of equivalent names, what they are, and what meaning and traditions are annexed to them. Without such details the theory remains