Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/338

 310 remains." "The attributes and powers of Mungan-ngaur," says Mr. Howitt elsewhere, "are precisely those of Daramulun and of Baianie, who are also called 'our Father' by the tribes believing in them." These attributes "are those of unbounded power, including of course a most potent magic, which is imparted by them to the wizards; the power of doing anything and going anywhere and of seeing all that is done by the tribesmen. Correlated with these is the power and the will to punish for breaches of the tribal laws. In all these instances the Great Father of the tribe, who was once on earth, and now lives in the sky, is rather the beneficent father, and the kindly, though severe, headman of the whole tribe—of men on earth and of ghosts [sc. of deceased tribesmen] in the sky—than the malevolent wizard, such as are other of the supernatural beings believed in by Australian Blacks."

This is all we are told of Mungan-ngaur. Scanty as the record is, therein lies its virtue. For facts, as we have already seen, are disposed to be so bigoted, that at length we may congratulate Mr. Lang on the discovery of a name that yields a little toleration and scope to his imagination. Let us pray him, however, to moderate its flight, remembering that more may be learned hereafter which may prove as awkward for his theory as some of the other facts of Australian belief. The analogy of the gods we have previously examined may well lead us to suspect that Munganngaur is not quite unknown outside the mysteries. His peculiarity is that he had no other name than Our Father. But the Kurnai have another Supreme Being—if indeed he be not the same—who is called Brewin. He, too, is in effect the headman of the tribe; but "with the attributes of malevolent magic powers." He, too, lives in the sky, though how he got thither Mr. Howitt did not learn. Like Baiame, he is married, and it is freely told how his wife