Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/18

 4 point of view of religion, a being who punishes sin. "He very frequently sent his sons to destroy bad men and bad women … who had killed and eaten blacks." In the North of Victoria, the natives believe that while creation has been the work of "very, very old ones" (Nooralie, elsewhere Nurrumbung uttias, or old spirits, these "old ones" precisely answering to the Ovakuru meyuru, or "old ones in heaven," of the African Ovahereros), "had severally the forms of the crow and the eagle."

Here already we find ourselves confronted by the omnipresent dualism of mythical cosmogonies. "There was continual war between the crow and the eagle;" between these two ornithomorphic creators the strife was as fierce as between wolf and raven, coyote and dog, Ormuzd and Ahriman, or any other numina of Oriental or savage belief. The enmity of the crow and