Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/178

 i62 Ihc Oi'igiu of Exoga/ny and 7^ofeiuisiu.

Tluis, given a set of local groups ^^ known by the names of Eagle Hawk, Crow, Wolf, Raven, or what not, the idea that these groups were intimately connected with the name-giving animals in each case was, in the long run, sure to occur to the savage thinker. On that assumed mystical connection, implied in the common name, and suggested by the common name, is laid the foundation of all early totemic practice. For the magiral properties of the connection bet\veen the name and its bearer, the reader has only to refer to Mr. Frazer's assortment of examples, already cited. We here give all that are needed for our purpose.

In Australia, each individual Arunta has a secret name, aritiia ch]tri?iga, " never uttered except on the most solemn occasions," "never to be spoken in the hearing of women, or of men, or of another group." To speak the secret name in these circumstances would be as impious " as the most flagrant case of sacrilege amongst white men." ^■-

The facts prove, I repeat, that to the early mind names, and the things known by names, are in a mystic and transcendental connection of rapport. Other Australian examples of the secrecy of a man's name, and of the power of magically injuring him by knowledge of his name, are given by Mr. Howitt, Brough Smyth, Lumholtz, Bulmer, Dawson, and others. It would appear that this superstition as to names is later than the first giving of animal names to totem groups, and that totem names were not given to

^^ I am sure to be told thai I declared local totem groups to be the result of reckoning in the male line, and not primitive, and that, here, I make the primitive animal-named group local. My reply is that in this passage I am not speaking of totem groups, but of local groups bearing animal names, a very different thing. A group may have borne an animal name long before it evolved totemic beliefs about the animal, and recognised it as a totem. No group that was not local could get a name to itself at this early stage of the proceedings. The " local habitation " precedes the " name."

1* Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 139.