Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/451

 Totemism, and Religion. 415

Yuin. The name of the being is not taken in vain. Mr. Howitt spoke to Yuin friends of "that great one," (pointing upwards), "who ordered your fathers to hold the Kuringal, and to make your boys into men." " The men looked at it," (at the miidthi displayed to them by Mr. Howitt), " with every appearance of awe." ^i If sacred awe of and obedience to "that great one above" be not religious, what is .'' Does Lord Avebury seriously deny that here we have religion .'*

Perhaps he does not quite deny it, for he now shifts his ground (p. 161). He takes up, if I follow his meaning, the old theory that anything which critics cannot easily deny to be religion, (such as the awe which the Yuin pay, and the obedience which they yield to " that great one" whose Name they scruple to utter), is borrowed from Christian missionaries, in Australia.

This theory I have disproved several times by arguments of which Lord Avebury takes no notice. For example, Lord Avebury quotes (p. 162), as to Baiame and the sup- posed attributes borrowed by him from missionaries, Mr. Tylor's criticisms.-^ Now I proved, on Mr. Tylor's own evidence that Baiame was "worshipped with songs," (and worship is the essential thing with Lord Avebury), "when the missionaries first came to Wellington" {circ. 1831).^^ In "The Theory of Loan Gods" in my Magic and Religion, I examined Mr. Tylor's arguments and evidence in full detail. Lord Avebury has overlooked my facts and arguments. Mr. Tylor, (whom Lord Avebury cites from Mr. Hartland), wrote "the evidence points rather, in my opinion, to Baiame being the missionary translation of the word Creator, used in Scripture lesson-books for God."^^ But as, by Mr. Tylor's own evidence, that of Mr. Hale {circ. 1840- 1842) quoting Mr. Threlkeld, a very early missionary, Baiame was in full force

210/. riV.,pp. 517, SI 8.

^ The Journal of the Anthropological Institute etc., vol. xxi., p. 293, {1892).

^ Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii., p. 8, (1899). ^* Avebury, p. 163.