Century, 1892) have not been successful (see Lang, Magic and Religion,
“The Theory of Loan Gods”) and N. W. Thomas in Man (1905), v. 49
et seq. The All-Father belief is most potent among the lowest
races, and always tends to become obsolete under the competition
of serviceable ancestral spirits, or gods made in the image of such
spirits, who can be bribed by sacrifices or induced by prayers to help
man in his various needs.
The belief in the All-Father in south-eastern Australia is concealed from the women and children who, at most, know his exoteric name, often meaning “Our Father,” and is revealed only to the initiate, among whom are a very few white men, like Howitt. Mrs Langloh Parker, of course, was not initiated (indeed, no white man has gone through the actual and very painful rites), but confidences were made to her with great secrecy. The All-Father, even at his best, among the Kurnai, Kamilaroi and Euahlayi, is the centre of many grotesque and sportive myths. He usually has a wife and children, not in all cases born, but rather they are emanations. One of these children is often his mediator with men, and has the charge of the rites and the mystic bull-roarer. The relation is that of Apollo to Zeus in Greek myth.
Many of the wilder myths are the expressions of the sportive and humorous faculties. Some arise naturally thus: Baiame, say, originated everything, therefore he originated the grotesque mummeries and dances of the mysteries. To explain these, myths have been developed to show that they arose in some grotesque incident of Baiame’s personal existence on earth. Many Greek myths, most derogatory to the dignity of Demeter, Dionysus, Zeus or Hera, arose in the same way, as explanations of buffooneries in the Eleusinian or other mysteries. In medieval literature the most sacred persons of our religion have grotesque associations attached to them in the same manner.
While the All-Father belief is common in the tribes of south-eastern Australia, the tribes round Lake Eyre, the Arunta (as known to Messrs Spencer and Gillen), and the other central and northern tribes, are credited with no germs of belief in what is called a supreme, and may truly be styled a superior being. That being, in many cases, but not so commonly in Australia, has a malevolent opposite who thwarts his work, an Ahriman to his Ormuzd. In one district, where the superior being is a crow, his opposite is an eagle-hawk. These two birds in many tribes give names to the two great exogamous and intermarrying divisions; in their case there is a va et vient of divine, human and theriomorphic elements, just as in the Greek myths of Zeus. As a rule, however, the Australian All-Father is anthropomorphic, and fairly well described in the native term when they speak English as “the Big Man,” powerful, deathless, friendly, “able to go everywhere and do everything,” “to see whatever you do.” The existence of the belief in this being was accepted by T. Waitz, and, though disputed by many squatters and most anthropologists, is now admitted on the strength of the evidence of Howitt, Cameron, Mrs Langloh Parker, Dawson, W. E. Roth in Ethnological Studies, and many other close observers. The belief being esoteric, a secret of the initiated, necessarily escaped casual inquirers.
Meanwhile, among some of the Arunta of the centre, among the Dieri and Urabunna tribes near Lake Eyre and their congeners, and among the tribes north by east of the Arunta, no such belief has been discovered by Messrs Spencer and Gillen, from whom the tribes kept no secrets, or by Mr Siebert, a missionary among the now all but extinct Dieri. There is just a trace of a dim sky-dwelling being, Arawotja, possibly an all but obliterated survival of an All-Father. Howitt speaks too of the Dieri Kutchi, who inspires medicine-men with ideas, but about him our information is scanty. Among all these tribes religion now takes another line, the belief in a supernormal race of Titanic beings, with no superior, who were the first dwellers on earth; who possessed powers far exceeding those of the medicine-men of to-day; and who, in one way or another, were connected with, or developed from, the totem animals, vegetables and other objects. These beings modified the face of the country; in Arunta belief rocks and trees arose to mark the places where they finally “went into the ground” (Oknanikilla), and their spirits still haunt certain places such as these; and are reincarnated in native women who pass by. These beings, in Arunta called “the people of the Alcheringa, or dream time” (but cf. Strehlow in Globus, ut supra), originated the tribal rites of initiation. In Dieri they are called Mura-Mura, and to them prayers are made for rain, accompanied by rain-making magic ceremonies, which in this case may be a symbolical expression of the prayers. There is a large body of myths about the Alcheringa folk, or Mura-Mura (see Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, Native Tribes of Northern Australia, and Howitt, Native Tribes of South-Eastern Australia), and the myths of their wanderings, prodigies and institution of rites and magic are represented in the dances of the mysteries. Most of the magic is worked (Intichiuma in Arunta) by the members of each totem kin or group for the behoof of the totem as an article of food supply. These rites are common in North America, but are worked by members of gilds or societies, not by totem kins.
The belief in these Mura-Mura or Alcheringa folk may obviously develop, in favourable circumstances, into a polytheism like that of Greece, or of Egypt, or of the Maoris. The old Irish gods in the poetic romances appear to have the same origin and shade away into the fairies. The baser Greek myths of the wanderings, amours and adventures of the gods, myths ignored by Homer, are parallel to the adventures of the Alcheringa people, and the fable of the mutilation of Osiris and the search for the lost organ by Isis, actually occurs among the Alcheringa tales of Messrs Spencer and Gillen. Among the Arunta, the Alcheringa folk are part of a strangely elaborate theory of evolution and of animism, which leaves no room for a creative being, or for a future life of the spirit, which is merely reincarnated at intervals.
Thus the doctrines of evolution and of creation, or the making of things, stand apart, or blend, in the metaphysics and religion of the lowest and least progressive of known peoples. The question as to which theory came first, whether Alcheringaism is a scientific effort that swept away All-Fatherism, or whether All-Fatherism is a religious reaction in despair of science and of the evolutionary doctrine, is settled by each inquirer in accordance with his personal bias. It has been argued that All-Fatherism is an advance, conditioned by coastal influences—more rain and more food—concomitant with a social advance to individual marriage, and reckoning of kin in the male line. But tribes far from the sea, as in northern New South Wales and Queensland, have the All-Father belief, with individual marriage and female descent, while tribes of the north coast, with male descent, are credited with no All-Father; and the Arunta, as far as possible from the sea, have no All-Father (save in Strehlow’s district), and have individual marriage and male reckoning of descent in matters of inheritance; while the Urabunna and Dieri, with female descent and the custom of pirrauru (called “group marriage” by Howitt), are not credited with the All-Father belief. Thus coastal conditions have clearly no causal influence on the development of the All-Father belief. If they had, the natives of central Queensland, remote from the sea, should not have their All-Father (Mulkari), and the natives of the northern and north-eastern coasts should have an All-Father, who is still to seek. The Arunta of Messrs Spencer and Gillen may have possessed and deposed the Altjira superior being of the Arunta known to Mr Strehlow, like the Atnatu of the adjacent Kaitish, or the All-Father of the neighbouring Luritja; or these beings may be more recent divergences of doctrine, departures from pure Alcheringaism with no All-Father. At present, at least, it is premature to dogmatize on these problems.[1]
The chief being among the supernatural characters of Bushman mythology is the insect called the Mantis.[2] Cagn or Ikaggen, the Mantis, is sometimes regarded with religious respect as a benevolent god. But his adventures are the merest nightmares of puerile fancy. He has a wife, an adopted daughter, whose real father is the “swallower” in Bushman swallowing African Savages. myths, and the daughter has a son, who is the Ichneumon. The Mantis made an eland out of the shoe of his son-in-law. The moon was also created by the Mantis out of his shoe, and it is red, because the shoe was covered with the red dust of Bushman-land. The Mantis is defeated in an encounter with a cat which happened to be singing a song about a lynx. The Mantis (like Poseidon, Hades, Metis and other Greek gods) was once swallowed, but disgorged alive. The swallower was the monster Ilkhwāi-hemm. Like Heracles when he leaped into the belly of the monster which was about to swallow Hesione, the Mantis once jumped down the throat of a hostile elephant, and so destroyed him. The heavenly bodies are gods among the Bushmen, but their nature and adventures must be discussed among other myths of sun, moon and stars. As a creator Cagn is sometimes said to have “given orders, and caused all things to appear to be made.” He struck snakes with his staff and turned them into men, as Zeus did with the ants in Aegina. But the Bushmen’s mythical theory of the origin of things must, as far as possible, be kept apart from the fables of the Mantis, the Ichneumon and other divine beings. Though animals, these gods have human passions and character, and possess the usual magical powers attributed to sorcerers.
Concerning the mythology of the Hottentots and Namas, we have a great deal of information in a book named Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi (1881), by Dr T. Hahn. This author collected the old notices of Hottentot myths, and added material from his own researches. The chief god of the Hottentots is a being named Tsuni-Goam, who is universally regarded by his worshippers as a deceased sorcerer. According to one old believer, “Tsui-Goab” (an alternative reading of the god’s name) “was a great powerful chief of the Khoi-Khoi—in fact, he was the first Khoi-Khoib from whom all the Khoi-Khoi tribes took their name.” He is always
- ↑ The drawback to knowledge is the rarity of full acquaintance with native languages. Strehlow, Roth and Ridley seem best equipped on the linguistic side. Spencer and Gillen do not tell us that they have a colloquial knowledge of any Australian language. Gason, author of a work on the Dieri tribe, knew their language well, but several of his statements appear to be inaccurate. Mrs Langloh Parker describes her methods of checking and controlling native statements made in English.
- ↑ Accounts of the Mantis and of his performances will be found in the Cape Monthly Magazine (July 1874), and in Dr Bleek’s Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore.
