Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/323

Rh of a malevolent being" (p. 193). We should rather say that the first inference to be drawn is that Daramulun is regarded as a special tribal patron. The Murring could not be ignorant that other tribes had their own mysteries. Whether they identified Daramulun with the Being who was celebrated in the latter we know not. Probably they never thought about it. At any rate it is clear that Daramulun holds a peculiar relation to the tribes which believe in him. His name is only communicated at initiation. It is unknown to women and children. Among the Ngarego and Wolgal (two of the Murring tribes) the women only know vaguely of a great being beyond the sky, whom they call Papang (father). The name of Daramulun is avoided by the men or spoken almost in whispers, except during the ceremonies, when it is uttered as the accompaniment of a dance. This apparent sacredness, be it observed, is founded on the universal superstition that a name is part and parcel of its owner, and to utter it is to summon the owner, however distant he may be. Obviously, to do so when the owner is a god and is not wanted, is to expose oneself to his vengeance for making a fool of him. It is a common, if not universal, custom for an Australian savage to have a secret name known only to members of his clan, or at least of his (territorial) tribe, and rarely or never uttered. The name of Daramulun is a secret only known to the Murring tribes and their congeners. It is said to mean "leg-on-one-side," or "lame," probably from a personal peculiarity, like among the Hottentots.

Daramulun having "in the beginning," a phrase to which we must give a very wide interpretation, "instituted these ceremonies, and constituted the aboriginal society as it exists" among these tribes, died; this eternal Creator with