Myth, Ritual and Religion

the second part of my Making of Religion (1898) and have excised certain passages which, as the book first appeared, were inconsistent with its main thesis. In some cases th

in his paper of 1892. For our information is not yet adequate to a scientific theory of the Origin of Religion, and probably never will be. Behind the races whom we must regard as “nearest the beginning” are their unknown ancestors from a dateless past, men as human as ourselves, but men concerning whose psychical, mental and moral condition we can only form conjectures. Among them religion arose, in circumstances of which we are necessarily ignorant. Thus I only venture on a surmise as to the germ of a faith in a Maker (if I am not to say “Creator”) and Judge of men. But, as to whether the higher religious belief, or the lower mythical stories came first, we are at least certain that the Christian conception of God, given pure, was presently entangled, by the popular fancy of Europe, in new Marchen about the Deity, the Madonna, her Son, and the Apostles. Here, beyond possibility of denial, pure belief came first, fanciful legend was attached after. I am inclined to surmise that this has always been the case, and, in the pages on the legend of Zeus, I sh

s 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 o

se wild or wicked fables about the gods also occur, th

lk-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.3 From a statement by Mr. Greenway4 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. Rid

nd also that Daramulun’s voice is heard at their rites, I don’t know.7 Nor do I know why Mr. Hartland takes the myth of a tribe where Daramulun is “the evil spirit who rules the night,”8 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.”9 This is no

a myth of the Mystery of the Wiraijuri, Baiame is not omniscient. Indeed, even civilised races cannot keep on the level of these religious conceptions, and not to keep on that level is — mythology. Apollo, in the hymn to Hermes, sung on a sacred occasion, needs to ask an old vine-dresser for intelligence. Hyperion “sees all and hea

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:11 “T

s 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 connection with an oak log. Yet surely there was “something sacred” in the faith of Zeus! Let us judge the Australians as we judge Greeks. The precepts as to “speaking the straightforward truth,” as to unselfishness, avoidance of quarrels, of wrongs to “unprotected women,” of unnatural vices, are certainly communicated in the Mysteries of some tribes, with, in another, knowledge of the name a

oint against me, if I spoke of the sacred and ethical characteristics of the Zeus adored by Eumaeus in the Odyssey. He would not be so humorous about Zeus, nor fall into an ignoratio elenchi. For my point never was that any Australian tribe had a pure theistic conception unsoiled and unobliterated by myth and buffoonery. My argument was that AMONG their ideas is that of a superhuman being, unceasing (if I may n

remarks published in 1612. Strachey interwove some of this work with his own MS. in the British Museum.” Here, as presently will be shown, I erred, in company with Strachey’s editor of 1849, and with the writer on Strachey in the Dictionary of National Biography. What Mr. Tylor quoted from an edition of Smith in 1632 had already appeared, in 1612, in a book (Map of Virginia, with a description of the Countrey) described on the title-page as “written by Captain Smith,” though, in my opinion, Smith may have had a collaborator. There is no evidence whatever that Strachey had anything to do with this book of 1612, in which there is no mention of Ahone. Mr. Arber dates Strachey’s own MS.

God

tures. In 1608 he sent to the Council at home a MS. map and description of the colony. In 1609 he returned to England (October). In May, 1610, William Strachey, gent., arrived in Virginia, where he was “secretary of state” to Lord De la Warr. In 1612 Strachey and Smith were both in England. In that year Barnes of Oxford published A Map of Virginia, with a descript

ikely), he sailed for England on 28th March, 1611. In that case, he was in England in 1611, and

d references to the ancient classics, with allusions to his own travels in the Levant. His glossary is much more extensive than Smith’s, and he inserts a native song of triumph over the English in the original.20 Now, w

ublished

themselues as near to his shape as they can imagine. In their Temples, they have his image euile favouredly carved, and then painted, and adorned with chaine

(Written,

r buylding, having comonly the dore opening into the east, and at the west end a spence or chauncell from the body of the temple, with hollow wyndings and pillers, whereon stand divers black imagies, fashioned to the shoulders, with their faces looking down the church, and where within their weroances, upon a kind of biere of reedes, lye buryed; and under them, apart, in a vault low in the ground (as a more secrett thing), vailed with a matt, sitts their Okeus, an image ill-favouredly carved, all black dressed, with chaynes of perle, the presentment and figure of that god (say the priests unto the laity, and who religiously believe what the priests saie) which doth them all the harme they suffer, be yt in their bodies or goods, within doores or abroad; and true yt is many of them are divers tymes (especyally offendors) shrewdly scratched as they walke alone in the woods, yt may well be by the subtyle spirit, the malitious enemy to mankind, whome, therefore, to pacefie and worke to doe them good (at least no harme) the priests tell them th

t description, which he sent home to the Council of Virginia, in November, 1608.23 To the book of 1612 was added a portion of “Relations” by different hands, edited by W. S., namely, Dr. Symonds. Strachey’s editor, in 1849, regarded W. S. as Strachey, and supposed that Strachey was the real author of Smith’s Map of Virginia, so that, in his Historie of Travaile, Strachey merely took back his own. He did not take back his own; he made use of Smith’s MS., not yet published, if Mr. Arber and I rightly date Strachey’s MS. at 1610-15, or 1611-12. Why Strachey acted thus it is

merican mythology.25 This view of a Virginian Creator, “our chief god” “who takes upon him this shape of a hare,” was got, says Strachey, “last year, 1610,” from a brother of the Potomac King, by a boy named Spilman, who says that Smith “sold

nd Dr. Brinton instructs us that Michabo originally meant not Great Hare, but “the spirit of light”.27 Thus, originally, the Red Men adored “The Spirit of Light, maker of the heavens and the world”. Strachey claims no more than this for Ahone. Now, of course, Dr. Brinton may be right. But I have already expressed my extreme distrust of the philological processes by which he extracts “The Great Light; spirit of light,” from Michabo, “beyond a doubt!” In my poor opinion, wh

borative evidence for Ahone, but then I have no accessible library of early books on Virginia. Now it is clear that if I found and produced evidence for Ahone as late as 1625, I would be met at once with the retort that, between 1610 and 1625, Christian ideas had contaminated the native beliefs. Thus if I find Ahone, or a d

d” among the Virginians. If I cannot to-day produce corroboration for a god named Ahone, I can at least show that, from the north of New England to the south of Virginia, there is early evidence, cited by Mr. Tylor, for a belief in a primal creative being, closely analogous to Ahone. And this evidence, I think, distinctly proves that such a being as Ahone was within the capacity of the Indians in these latitudes. Mr. Tylor must have thought in 1891 that the natives were competent to a belief in a supreme deity, for he said, “Another famous native American name for the supreme deity is Oki”.32 In the essay of 1892, however, Oki does not appear to exist as a god’s name till 1724. We may now, for earlier evidence, turn to Master Thomas Heriot, “that learned mathematician” “who spoke the Indian language,” and was with the company which abandoned Virginia on 18th June, 1586. They ranged 130 miles north and 130 miles north-west of Roanoke Island, which brings them into the neighbourhood of Smith’s and Strachey’s country. Heriot writes as to the native creeds: “They believe that there are many gods which they call Mantoac, but of different sorts and degre

from the conclusion that the Virginians believed as Heriot says they did, except the device of alleging that they promptly borrowed some of Heriot’s ideas and maintained that these ideas had ever been their own. Heriot certainly did not recognise the identity. “Through conversing with us they were brought into great doubts of their owne (religion), and no small admiration of ours; of which many desired to learne more than we had the meanes for want of utterance in their language

eming the country “a cold, barren, mountainous rocky desart”. I am apt to believe that they did not plant the fructifying seeds of grace among the natives in 1607-1608. But the missionary efforts of French traders may, of course, have been blessed; nor can I deny t

Kiehtan, that dwelleth far westerly above the heavens, whither all good men go when they die, and have plentie of all things. The bad go thither also and knock at the door, but (‘the door is shut’) he bids them go wander in endless wan

call on him in their sickness. They say this Hobamock appears to them sometimes like a man, a deer, or an eagle, but most commonly like a snake; not to all but to their Powahs to cure diseases, and Undeses . . . and these are such as conjure in Virginia, and cause the people to do what they list.” Winsl

ind fairly harmonious accounts of a polydaemonism with a chief, primal, c

rcourse would have suggested, and who is heard of by such early explorers among such distant tribes, could be a deity of foreign origin”. NOW, he “can HARDLY be ALTOGETHER a deity of foreign origin”.38 I agree with Mr. Tylor’s earlier statement. In my opinion Ahone — Okeus, Kiehtan — Hobamock, correspond, the first pair to the usually unseen

ble element in Virginian belief. Without temple or service, such a being w

45). The children of Shem and Japheth alone “retained, until the coming of the Messias, the only knowledge of the eternal and never-changing Trinity”. The Virginians, on the other hand, fell heir to the ignorance, and “fearful and superstitious instinct of nature” of Ham (p. 40). Ahone, therefore, is not invented by Strachey to bo

lies, (3) to the intercession of Pocahontas, as Smith, and his friends for him, at various dates inconsistently declared. Smith certainly saw more of the natives at home: Strachey brought a more studious mind to what he could learn of their customs and ideas; and is not a convicted braggart. I conjecture that one of Strachey’s sources was a native named Kemps. Smith had seized Kemps and Kinsock in 1609. Unknown authorities (Powell? and Todkill?) represent these two savages as “the most exact villaines in the country”.40 They were made to labour in fetters, then were set at liberty, but “little desired it”.41 Some “souldiers” ran away to the liberated Kemps, who brought them back to Smith.42 Why Kemps and his friend are called “two of the most exact villains in the country” does not appear. Kemps died “of the surveye” (scurvey, probably) at Jamestown, in 1610-11. He was much mad

ho was with Smith) “was at, and observed” a similar mystery at Kecoughtan. It is plain that the rite was not a sacrifice, but a Bora, or initiation, and the parallel of the Spartan flogging of boys, with the retreat of the boys and their instructors,

n a line with Kiehtan and the God spoken of by Heriot, and do not believe (1) that Strachey lied; (2) tha