Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/514

 468 Reviews.

belief of Herr Strehlow's region of inquiry, but not in that of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. They could not have missed a being after whom they made research, if he were part of Arunta belief in their field of work. Among the adjacent Loritja tribe, Herr Strehlow finds an " Etre Supreme," Tukura^ while the Alcheringa ancestral spirits are Tukutita, in the plural ; M. Hoffmann compares Dieri Mura (?) and the ancestral beings, Mura-Mura. We need more knowledge of the language. He lays stress on the many grades of difference in the conceptions of the All Father, from the moral Baiame and Mujigan-ngaua of the Kamilaroi and Kurnai, to the non- moral Atnatu of the Kaitish. He inclines to think that if Mr. Howitt rightly takes Kurnai and Yuin ideas to suggest, perhaps, an age prior to adoration of ancestors {M. Hoffmann means, e.g.^ the Dieri Mura-Mura), then the moral is more archaic than the non-moral All Father, who is fading away under the competition of animistic and Alcheringa ideas. But I have not observed that the Alcheringa spirits take up any of the moral sway of beings like Baiame : and Alcheringa beings are not ghosts of known human ancestors.

M. Hoffmann next studies the Fuegians, — about whom one desires more recent information, — the Bushmen, and Puluga of the Andamanese. For the African All Fathers he uses the evidence of Miss Kingsley, Allegret, Trilles, Bennet {J.A.I, vol. xxix., 1899), Beguin, Decle, Jacottet, Gottschling {J.A.I, vol. XXXV., 1905), Hetherwick, and Spieth {Die Ewe- Stdmme, Reimer, Berlin, 1906). The last-named writer is unknown to me, and many of the others had not published their observations when I wrote The Making of Religion.

An Ewe hymn to Matvu (p. 65) singularly resembles Psalm 139, verse 7, et seqq. Mawu appears to receive no sacrifice except once a year a goat tethered to a stake and left to die. Though Melanesia yields few traces of an All Father, the Harisu of the people of Elema is a fine example, destitute of cult (Holmes, J.A.I, vol. xxxii., 1902), and Lata, in the Reef Islands, is equally good, though he seems to receive both prayers and offerings (O'Farrell, J.A.I, vol. xxxiv., 1904). In the isle of Nias (west coast of Sumatra) Lowalangi