Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/381

 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs, 361

squares well " with Sir George Grey's description of a Kobong or totem in Western Australia. There a native gives his totem " a fair show " before killing it, always affording it a chance of escape, and never killing it in its sleep. He only does not shoot his kindred animal sitting ; and his plant he only spares " in certain circumstances, and at a particular period of the year." Mr. Frazer writes that as the man does not know which individual of the species of plant or animal " is specially dear to him, he is obliged to spare them all, for fear of injuring the dear one." But the man, it seems, from Grey's account^ does not " spare " any of them ; he kills or plucks them " reluctantly," and in a sportsmanlike manner, " never without affording them a chance of escape." In a case of Sir George Grey's, the killing of a crow hastened the death of a man of the crow totem, who had been ailing for some days. But the Australians do not all think that to kill a man's totem is to kill the man. Somebody's totem is killed whenever any animal is slain. Mr. Frazer now finds that the Battas, for example, " do not in set terms affirm their eternal soul to be in their totems," and I am not aware that any totem- ists do make this assertion. They freely offer all other sorts of mythical explanations as to what their totems originally were, as to the origin of their connection with their totems, but never say that their totems are their " soul-boxes."

Mr. Frazer has an answer to this objection. " How close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he," (the savage), " hides the inner keep and citadel of his being." The giant in the Marchen, tries to keep the secret of his " soul-box," much more then does " the timid and furtive savage." " No inducement that can be offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing its hiding place to a stranger. It is therefore no matter for surprise that the central mystery of the savage's life should so long have remained a secret, and that we should be left