Page:More Australian legendary tales.djvu/22

 dreamers. Barbarians did the dreaming for the world, poetry arose in their fancies, and poetry, in spite of facts and science, resolutely refuses to "follow darkness like a dream." Mrs. Parker's collection demonstrates that, among the world's dreamers, the Australians, just escaping from the Palaeolithic age, were among the most distinguished.

On many points we need further information. It is commonly said that the Biraarks, or native necromants, have disappeared. But Mrs. Parker has seen one, a woman, whose call the spirits obey, and who, like D. D. Home, works her marvels in open day. We have had no account of an Australian, though we have several accounts of Maori, Guiana and Red Indian séances. One hopes that Mrs. Parker will fill up the lacuna with a detailed report of her own observations, to which she briefly refers. Anthropology has no reason for neglecting these affairs any more than the countless other things in which savage practice tallies with the mysticisms of civilisation.

Many of the myths are ætiological—they account for origins. The tales of the "West Wind," of "The Mirage Maker," of "The Blood Flowers," and others, are highly poetical. Ovid would have found in them excellent material for more Metamorphoses. The girl who "sang new songs, which she said the spirits taught her," merely gave the animistic explanation of her own genius. "Their voices come to me on every breeze," as to the girl of Domremi. The stories are tender with human affection.