Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/337

Rh because she plays a part in the mysteries. Two bull-roarers are used, a large one and a small one, bearing the respective names of Tundun, "the man," and Rukut Tundun, the woman, or wife of Tundun. The former is also called grandfather, or Mŭkbrōgan, Arch-comrade. At any rate Mungan-ngaur is father, not creator, for no myth of creation is mentioned. He is the culture-god who taught the Kurnai all the arts they know and gave them the names—the personal names apparently—they bear. The giving of a name is the function of the paternal grandfather or grandmother. Hence it is appropriately assigned to a being who is regarded as ancestor. Moreover, he instiuted the Jeraeil or mysteries, and, says Mr. Lang with a covert reference to the Hebrew Deluge, "destroyed the earth by water when they were impiously revealed" (p. 196). But the similarity to the story in Genesis is not really so great. Mungan-ngaur lived at that time upon the earth. When the secrets were revealed to women, he became angry and "sent fire, which filled the whole space between earth and sky. Men went mad with fear and speared one another Then the sea rushed over the land and nearly all mankind were drowned. Those who survived became the ancestors of the Kurnai. Some of them turned into animals, birds, reptiles, and fishes; and Tundun and his wife," who we are not told were guilty, "became porpoises." The transformed people are called Muk-Kurnai, Arch-Kurnai, Eminent Men. Mungan then "left the earth and ascended to the sky, where he still