te with dirt and clay was preserved. We have nothing quite like
that in modern initiations. Except at Sparta, Greeks dropped the
tortures inflicted on boys and girls in the initiations superintended by
the cruel Artemis. {33} But Greek mysteries retained the daubing with
mud and the use of the bull-roarer. On the whole, then, and on a general
view of the subject, we prefer to think that the bull-roarer in Greece
was a survival from savage mysteries, not that the bull-roarer in New
Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa is a relic of
civilisation.

Let us next observe a remarkable peculiarity of the turndun, or
Australian bull-roarer. The bull-roarer in England is a toy. In
Australia, according to Howitt and Fison, {34} the bull-roarer is
regarded with religious awe. 'When, on lately meeting with two of the
surviving Kurnai, I spoke to them of the turndun, they first looked
cautiously round them to see that no one else was looking, and then
answered me in undertones.' The chief peculiarity in connection with the
turndun is that women may never look upon it. The Chepara tribe, who
call it bribbun, have a custom that, 'if seen by a woman, or shown by a
man to a woman, the punishment to both is _death_.'

Among the Kurnai, the sacred mystery of the turndun is preserved by a
legend, which gives a supernatural sanction to secrecy. When boys go
through the mystic ceremony of initiation they are shown turnduns, or
bull-roarers, and made to listen to their hideous din. They are then
told that, if ever a woman is allowed to see a turndun, the earth will
open, and water will cover the globe. The old men point spears at the
boy's eyes, saying: 'If you tell this to any woman you will die, you will
see the ground broken up and like the sea; if you tell this to any woman,
or to any child, you will be killed!' As in Athens, in Syria, and among
the Mandans, the deluge-tradition of Australia is connected with the
mysteries. In Gippsland there is a tradition of the deluge. 'Some
children of the Kurnai in playing about found a turndun, which they took
home to the camp and showed the women. Immediately the earth crumbled
away, and it was all water, and the Kurnai were drowned.'

In consequence of all this mummery the Australian women attach great
sacredness to the very name of the turndun. They are much less
instructed in their own theology than the men of the tribe. One woman
believed she had heard Pundjel, th