Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/31

 Presidential Address. 19

nor does any man expect to see him. They believe also in an evil one, in a god of the winds and a god of thunder, and hold that the spirits of the departed walk the earth after dark. This tribe would seem to be in a position that Mr. Lang would consider one of degeneration. Mr. Heagney said of the Birria and other tribes at the Thomson and Barcoo rivers, that they believe in the existence of invisible beings, who can make them happy or miserable, who hover about the burial places of the dead and severely punish those who break the laws relating to food restrictions and to marriage, who are prayed to for rain, and sung to for vengeance on enemies. This tribe seems to introduce Mr. Lang's ethical element. Mr. Armstrong said of the Mungerra tribe at Cape River, that they have a great fear of a supernatural being, and also of the dead. Mr. MacGlashan said of the Koombokkaburra tribe, between Cape River and Belyando River, that they have a religious belief of some sort, and a strong dislike to hear the dead mentioned. Mr. Fuller, missionary, said of the aborigines of Eraser's Island, that they are firm believers in ghosts and in a devil, but have no idea of a God. Mr. Mathew said of the Kabi tribe on the Mary River that they have a vague belief in water spirits and an apprehension of ghosts, but know nothing of a supreme being, and perform no acts of invocation or propitiation. Mr. Bucknell agreed with the late Rev. Wm. Ridley, that the Kamilaroi on the Guyder River believe in the existence of an Almighty Creator and in spirits, and Mr. Ridley derived the name for God in the Wodi-wodi language from the word for " sky." Mr. Bulmer said that the Gippsland or Kurnai tribes, as far as can be ascertained, have no knowledge of God, and certainly no worship or religious belief of any kind ; but he said that they practise sorcery, believe in magic, and devote victims to destruction with what he called "cabalistic" ceremonies, which were so much dreaded that, not unfrequently, men and women who learned that they had been made the sub-

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