Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/502

 470 Reviews.

would develop into magical rites for the production of a food supply when, owing to a progressive deterioration of the climatic conditions, it became more and more precarious. Or if, when they reached the interior, the climatic conditions were such as now prevail, the magical rites might have developed after they had arrived at the more inhospitable regions.

Again, the Warramunga perform the totemic ceremonies with far greater regularity and symmetry than the Arunta. Not merely are their personal decorations more realistic and expressive, but with them the ceremonies have always a well-defined sequence, illustrating the march of the totemic legend, and are not interrupted or performed in arbitrary order, as among the Arunta. This we are told " is perhaps largely to be accounted for by the fact that in the Arunta each separate ceremony is the property of some special individual who alone has the right of performing it, or of requesting some one else to do so, whilst in the Warramunga they are each and all of them the property not of an individual, but of the whole totem group." I have pointed elsewhere ^ to the analogy between the ownership of these ceremonies and that of the Kwakiutl ceremonies as one indication of the evolution of the Intichiuma in the direction of secret societies like those of British Columbia. The words I have quoted from the new account of the Warramunga ceremonies show further that there is a disintegration (such as would be caused by growing indi- vidualism) going on among the Arunta ceremonies in striking contrast to the former ; and they afford an additional reason for holding the Arunta practices to be less primitive.

Moreover, not all of the Warramunga totemic ceremonies are performed with magical intent. One series at any rate, that connected with Wollunqua totem, is directed solely to placating the totem animal. The Wollunqua is a mythical beast, of which the members of the Wollunqua totem-kin appear to be regarded as descendants, or rather emanations, and which is still living. Some of the features of the ceremonies, as the authors point out, " appear to show clearly that we are dealing with what are, in reality, a primitive form of propitiatory ceremonies." And they contend that these ceremonies "are simply a special modification of" the ceremonies of other totems. It is at least equally

' Presidential Address, January, 1900, Folk-I.ore, vol. xi., p. 75.