Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/324

296 a game-leg "died, and his spirit (Bulabong) went up to the sky, where he has since lived with the ghosts." The statement is unaccountably overlooked by Mr. Lang, who indeed asserts the contrary (p. 194, note), and insists that "the essential idea of Daramulun and Baiame, and most of the high gods of Australia and of other low races, is that they never died at all" (p. 205). When a god dies, he is "a confessed ghost-god " (p. 205). Daramulun, therefore, is "a confessed ghost-god."

Perhaps Mr. Lang will tell us that this legend of Daramulun's death is a part of the folklore, of the mythology, and not of the religious belief of the Murring tribes. That lies upon him to show: Mr. Howitt is silent on the point. "The mythology of the god is a kind of joke with no sacredness about it," says Mr. Lang (p. 197). No doubt this is a very convenient way of treating awkward statements. On the previous page, however, he has been dealing with myths in all seriousness, setting against one which "may be interpreted as ancestor-worship," others which may be (and are by him) interpreted of creation; and apparently he is satisfied with the overwhelming number of these myths of creation. "The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning." If the mythology of the god be a kind of joke, then the "myth of making or creating" has "no sacredness about it," and is of no more value as an expression of the real belief of the "Narrinyeri, Boonorong, the Wolgal, Ngarego, Theddora, Coast Murring, and Wiraijuri, worshippers of Daramulun," than the myth told by the Kurnai of their "grandfather, not maker," Mungan-ngaur.

But what is the distinction between religious belief and myth? Where does the one begin and the other end? Myths are told in the mysteries as well as outside them. They are part of the rite, part of the religious belief.