l by the camp-fire, Eskimo in their dark
huts, and Australians in the shade of the gunyeh--myths cruel, puerile,
obscene, like the fancies of the savage myth-makers from which they
sprang.

THE BULL-ROARER.
A Study of the Mysteries.

As the belated traveller makes his way through the monotonous plains of
Australia, through the Bush, with its level expanses and clumps of grey-
blue gum trees, he occasionally hears a singular sound. Beginning low,
with a kind of sharp tone thrilling through a whirring noise, it grows
louder and louder, till it becomes a sort of fluttering windy roar. If
the traveller be a new comer, he is probably puzzled to the last degree.
If he be an Englishman, country-bred, he says to himself, 'Why, that is
the bull-roarer.' If he knows the colony and the ways of the natives, he
knows that the blacks are celebrating their tribal mysteries. The
roaring noise is made to warn all women to keep out of the way. Just as
Pentheus was killed (with the approval of Theocritus) because he profaned
the rites of the women-worshippers of Dionysus, so, among the Australian
blacks, men must, at their peril, keep out of the way of female, and
women out of the way of male, celebrations.

The instrument which produces the sounds that warn women to remain afar
is a toy familiar to English country lads. They call it the bull-roarer.
The common bull-roarer is an inexpensive toy which anyone can make. I do
not, however, recommend it to families, for two reasons. In the first
place, it produces a most horrible and unexampled din, which endears it
to the very young, but renders it detested by persons of mature age. In
the second place, the character of the toy is such that it will almost
infallibly break all that is fragile in the house where it is used, and
will probably put out the eyes of some of the inhabitants. Having thus,
I trust, said enough to prevent all good boys from inflicting
bull-roarers on their parents, pastors, and masters, I proceed (in the
interests of science) to show how the toy is made. Nothing can be less
elaborate. You take a piece of the commonest wooden board, say the lid
of a packing-case, about a sixth of an inch in thickness, and about eight
inches long and three broad, and you sharpen the ends. When finished,
the toy may be about the shape of a large bay-leaf, or a 'fish' used as a
counter (that is how the New Zealanders make it), or the sides may be
left plain in the ce