Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 (of 2)Lang, Andrew
Religion
Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Lang, Andrew
Myth; Mythology; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
Mr. Hartland's point, however, seems to be that, in the Making of
Religion, I had selected certain Australian beliefs as especially
"sacred" and to be distinguished from others, because they are
inculcated at the religious Mysteries of some tribes. His aim, then, is
to discover low, wild, immoral myths, inculcated at the Mysteries, and
thus to destroy my line drawn between religion on one hand and myth or
mere folk-lore on the other. Thus there is a being named Daramulun, of
whose rites, among the Coast Murring, I condensed the account of Mr.
Howitt.(1) From a statement by Mr. Greenway(2) Mr. Hartland learned
that Daramulun's name is said to mean "leg on one side" or "lame". He,
therefore, with fine humour, speaks of Daramulun as "a creator with a
game leg," though when "Baiame" is derived by two excellent linguists,
Mr. Ridley and Mr. Greenway, from Kamilaroi baia, "to make," Mr.
Hartland is by no means so sure of the sense of the name. It happens to
be inconvenient to him! Let the names mean what they may, Mr. Hartland
finds, in an obiter dictum of Mr. Howitt (before he was initiated), that
Daramulun is said to have "died," and that his spirit is now aloft.
Who says so, and where, we are not informed,(3) and the question is
important.
(1) J. A. I., xiii. pp. 440-459.
(2) Ibid., xxi. p. 294.
(3) Ibid., xiii. p. 194.
For the Wiraijuri, IN THEIR MYSTERIES, tell a myth of cannibal conduct
of Daramulun's, and of deceit and failure of knowledge in Baiame.(1)
Of this I was unaware, or neglected it, for I explicitly said that I
followed Mr. Howitt's account, where no such matter is mentioned. Mr.
Howitt, in fact, described the Mysteries of the Coast Murring, while
the narrator of the low myths, Mr. Matthews, described those of a
remote tribe, the Wiraijuri, with whom Daramulun is not the chief, but
a subordinate person. How Mr. Matthews' friends can at once hold that
Daramulun was "destroyed" by Baiame (their chief deity), and also that
Daramulun's voice is heard at their rites, I don't know.(2) Nor do I
know why Mr. Hartland takes the myth of a tribe where Daramulun is "the
evil spirit who rules the night,"(3) and introduces it as an argument
against the belief of a distant tribe, where, by Mr. Howitt's account,
Daramulun is not an evil spirit, but "the master" of all, whose abode
is above the sky, and to whom are attributed powers of omnipotence
and omnipresence, or, at any rate, the power "to do anything and to
go anywhere.... To his direct ordinances are attributed the social and
moral laws of the community."(4) This is not "an evil spirit"! When Mr.
Hartland goes for scandals to a remote tribe of a different creed
that he may discredit the creed of the Coast Murring, he might as well
attribute to the Free Kirk "the errors of Rome". But Mr. Hartland does
it!(5) Being "cunning of fence" he may reply that I also spoke loosely
of Wiraijuri and Coast Murring as, indifferently, Daramulunites. I did,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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