Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/327

 Rh to ashes, and then to form the ashes into human shape and restore them to life, each with a tooth missing, the visible sign of his initiation. Or, as the story is told "in some tribes," he swallowed them and vomited them up again, possessing all the tribal knowledge, but each of them minus a tooth. Some, however, of the boys were, time after time, never returned to the camp. Baiame at length grew uneasy about them; and by dint of questioning the young men, and compelling them, in spite of their fears of Daramulun, to speak the truth, he learnt that Daramulun's account of the process of initiation was entirely untrue, that he did not swallow or kill all the boys, but that he wrenched out the missing tooth with his own, and sometimes varied the performance by biting off the boy's entire face and devouring him. A boy so treated, of course, did not return. Baiame in his rage destroyed the moral, eternal, omniscient Creator and Judge, Daramulun, and, putting his voice into all the trees of the forest, decreed that it should remain in them for ever. He furthermore instituted the Būrbŭng, as the mysteries of the Wiradthuri are called, and made the first bull-roarer, but directed that the women and uninitiated were not to be told of Daramulun's fraud; they were to be left under the impression that the boys were actually put to death and restored to life by Daramulun. It is added that this fraudulent moral being "had a wife named Moonibear, who watched over all matters relating to the women of the tribes"; and a small bull-roarer bearing her name was also used in the ceremonies.

All these particulars have been judiciously omitted by Mr. Lang, though there is no evidence that they are a whit less sacred, or looked upon as a whit less true, than any he has given us; and the scientific inquirer must take them into account, and in their light interpret whatever else is told us about the Great Master, Daramulun. But we have still to