Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/557

 Correspondence. 493

not immortal, " is still running " ; and who often sanctions conduct and is a judge of souls. As to his " invisibility," at least in the Andaman islands "nobody ever sees him" or her. Though nobody ever saw Puluga, yet people describe his per- sonal appearance ; such is the nature of mythological logic. When an Andamanese says that a thing is never seen, he means, I think, what we mean by "invisible." People speak amongst us of "the unseen world," when they mean the world of ghosts, which, according to them, are pretty often on view.

Mr. Brown discovers that, in at least six linguistic groups out of eleven, Biliku or Bilika, — (we think of Dickens's The Billikin), — or Oluga is female, while in two cases Puluga is male, and in three cases the sex of Bilik is doubtful. In four cases the name means spider, and in one monitor lizard, which satis- factorily accounts for the circumstance that the being is eighteen feet high and anthropomorphic, at least in one instance where the name does not mean spider.

But, as the word is radically the same in all the groups, let it be supposed that it always meant spider, though where the being is male the meaning is lost, which is odd. We are reminded of the African Ananzi (spider) and of the Bushman Cagn (mantis insect). A very decent All-Father Cagn is, accord- ing to what Qing, king Ngusha's Bushman hunter, told Mr. Orpen, who reports his conversation.

We now consider the female Billikinses. It would be inter- esting to know if they are found in tribes with female descent, while the male beings occur in tribes with male descent. Where the Billikinses have a husband, Tarai, as in the north, we are reminded of Birrahgnooloo, who " is mother of all and not related to any one clan," and is the consort of Byamee, but not a wife, "not vulgarised by ordinary domestic relations" {The Euahlayi Tribe, Mrs. Langloh Parker, p. 7). She hears prayers for rain, and makes Byamee's actual wife " start the flood- ball of blood rolling down the mountains." But Byamee is the predominant partner. Where there are female Billikinses, named spider, their husband is the south-west wind ; while, where Puluga rules, his brothers are the winds. Such variants as to the relationships of mythical beings are very common in South-East