Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/325

Rh Men reasoned about things in a more or less disjointed fashion, and their reasonings took the shape of tales. The theories of savages regarding the origin of things are always expressed as narrative, nor do they trouble to render them consistent. The real origin of the contradictions in these narratives, even when told by the same people about the same persons and events, is not so much that some are esteemed sacred and others secular. There is no such division, or, if there be, Mr. Howitt and Mr. Matthews, who are Mr. Lang's authorities, do not know it, for they quote indiscriminately as beliefs stories told in the mysteries and stories told outside them; and they ought to know. The reason lies in the vagueness of the savage mind and the shifting nature of tradition.

We may illustrate this statement by a few other facts recorded (but not by Mr. Lang) about this moral, eternal, omniscient Creator and Judge. The Wiraijuri (one of the Murring tribes) hold explicitly that Daramulun is not the supreme master, but the son of Baiame, whom we shall discuss presently. Indeed, according to some versions, there are several Daramuluns, all of them sons of Baiame. This tribe holds, too, that Daramulun lives not in heaven, but in the earth. A wizard related to Mr. Howitt how he had been taken down by his totem, a tiger-snake, into the ground beneath a great tree, and up under the tree, which was hollow; and there he saw, not Daramulun, but "a number of little Daramuluns." It does not appear whether these were the offspring of Daramulun. In any case Daramulun has a wife, or two wives, for her name, Ngalalbal, is a dual form, and here again tradition seems to vary. Ngalalbal is or are invoked, equally with Daramulun, in the mysteries. She is the emu and "woman;" and hence emu-flesh is forbidden to novices, who are not allowed "so much as to look at a woman or to speak to one." The Wiraijuri also call the emu "the food of Baiame," and forbid its flesh on this account to novices. The emu seems