Australian gods as set forth in the Making
of Religion. Mr. Hartland, who kindly read the chapters on Australian
religion in this book, does not consider that my note on p. 19 meets the
point of his argument. As to the Australians, I mean no more than that,
AMONG endless low myths, some of them possess a belief in a "maker
of everything," a primal being, still in existence, watching conduct,
punishing breaches of his laws, and, in some cases, rewarding the
good in a future life. Of course these are the germs of a sympathetic
religion, even if the being thus regarded is mixed up with immoral or
humorous contradictory myths. My position is not harmed by such myths,
which occur in all old religions, and, in the middle ages, new myths
were attached to the sacred figures of Christianity in poetry and
popular tales.

Thus, if there is nothing "sacred" in a religion because wild or wicked
fables about the gods also occur, there is nothing "sacred" in almost
any religion on earth.

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 kn