answering to the Greek belief in "the wizard Minos," Æacus, and Rhadamanthus, and to the Egyptian idea of Osiris as judge of the departed.[1] The pretensions of the sorcerer to converse with the dead are attested by Mr. Brough Smyth.[2] "A sorcerer lying on his stomach spoke to the deceased, and the other sitting by his side received the precious messages which the dead man told." As a natural result of these beliefs, the Australian necromant has great power in the tribe. Mr. Howitt mentions a case in which a group of kindred, ceasing to use their old totemistic surname, called themselves the children of a famous dead Birraark, who thus became an eponymous hero, like Ion among the Ionians.[3] Among the Scotch Highlanders the position and practice of the seer were very like those of the Birraark. "A person," says Scott[4] "was wrapped up in the skin of a newly slain bullock and deposited beside a waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange, wild, and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved in his mind the question proposed, and whatever was impressed on him by his exalted imagination passed for the inspiration of the disembodied spirits who haunt these desolate recesses." A number of examples are given in Martin's Description of the
- ↑ Bosman in Pinkerton, xvi. p. 401.
- ↑ Aborigines of Australia, i. 107.
- ↑ In Victoria, after dark the wizard goes up to the clouds and brings down a good spirit. Dawkins, p. 57. For eponymous medicine-men see Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231.
- ↑ Lady of the Lake, note 1 to Canto iv.
