Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/560

 49^ Correspondence.

enquirers, nobody ever sees him ; not that he is invisible, he merely cannot be seen.

II. Mr. Brown holds that the belief in the male Puluga or Bilik is secondary ; " those groups which represent Puluga as male have changed their belief." Perhaps, — but why? Does the change correspond to any change in society ? The question has been much discussed in connection with the goddess of " Minoan " and Asiatic civilisation.

III. Mr. Man says that Puluga "is immortal." No more than " all other beings in the Andamanese myths are immortal," says Mr. Brown. " No one has ever supposed it possible that they might come to an end." But he has told us that Biliku came to as much of an end as Lot's wife (p. 265). And where are all the other beings in the Andamanese myths? Puluga and Co. are in the sky.

IV. As to Mr. Man's story that Puluga, like Pundjel, "knows all the thoughts of their hearts, by day," Mr. Brown does not comment on the matter.

V. We have already spoken about " causes of wrath," and Mr. Brown does not enter, at present, into the question of a future life.

He gives his own theory of the origin of the beliefs, in meteorological phenomena. But how the north-east wind could be supposed to create sky, earth, and sea, I know not.

Finally, except as to the female character of some of these creative and sky-dwelling persons, Mr. Brown tells us nothing for which I cannot find a parallel in the All-Father myths of the world.

He shows us beings of unknown, and not of human, origin; not Alcheringa folk; makers of earth, sky, and sea, and now dwellers in the sky; who so far observe human conduct as to punish certain offences ; who are wielders of the thunderbolt, and lords of the weather ; who are not animistic, not exalted ghosts. These beings are already quite well recognised among certain rare types, — decadent, perhaps, perhaps not yet fully evolved, — by friends of the All-Father theory. They are no new things to us ; we only ask, are they degraded or nascent types of the All-Father?