, needs to ask an old vine-dresser
for intelligence. Hyperion "sees all and hears all," but needs to be
informed, by his daughters, of the slaughter of his kine. The Lord, in
the Book of Job, has to ask Satan, "Whence comest thou?" Now for the
sake of dramatic effect, now from pure inability to live on the level of
his highest thought, man mythologises and anthropomorphises, in Greece
or Israel, as in Australia.

It does not follow that there is "nothing sacred" in his religion. Mr.
Hartland offers me a case in point. In Mrs. Langloh Parker's Australian
Legendary Tales (pp. 11, 94), are myths of low adventures of Baiame. In
her More Australian Legendary Tales (pp. 84-99), is a very poetical
and charming aspect of the Baiame belief. Mr. Hartland says that I will
"seek to put" the first set of stories out of court, as "a kind of
joke with no sacredness about it". Not I, but the Noongahburrah tribe
themselves make this essential distinction. Mrs. Langloh Parker says:(1)
"The former series" (with the low Baiame myths) "were all such legends
as are told to the black picaninnies; among the present are some they
would not be allowed to hear, touching as they do on sacred things,
taboo to the young". The blacks draw the line which I am said to seek to
draw.

(1) More Legendary Tales, p. xv.

In yet another case(1) grotesque hunting adventures of Baiame are
told in the mysteries, and illustrated by the sacred temporary
representations in raised earth. I did not know it; I merely followed
Mr. Howitt. But I do not doubt it. My reply is, that there was
"something sacred" in Greek mysteries, something purifying, ennobling,
consoling. For this Lobeck has collected (and disparaged) the evidence
of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero and many others, while even Aristophanes,
as Prof. Campbell remarks, says: "We only have bright sun and cheerful
life who have been initiated and lived piously in regard to strangers
and to private citizens".(2) Security and peace of mind, in this world
and for the next, were, we know not how, borne into the hearts of Pindar
and Sophocles in the Mysteries. Yet, if we may at all trust the Fathers,
there were scenes of debauchery, as at the Mysteries of the Fijians
(Nanga) there was buffoonery ("to amuse the boys," Mr. Howitt says of
some Australian rites), the story of Baubo is only one example, and, in
other mysteries than the Eleusinian, we know of mummeries in which an
absurd tale of Zeus is related in conn