’The Supreme Spirit, who is believed in by all the tribes I refer to here [in South-Eastern Australia], either as a benevolent, or more frequently as a malevolent being, it seems to me represents the defunct headman.’

Now, the traces of ‘headmanship’ among the tribes are extremely faint; no such headman rules large areas of country, none is known to be worshipped after death, and the malevolence of the Supreme Spirit is not illustrated by the details of Mr. Howitt’s own statement, but the reverse.  Indeed, he goes on at once to remark that ’Darumulun was not, it seems to me, everywhere thought a malevolent being, but he was dreaded as one who could severely punish the trespasses committed against these tribal ordinances and customs whose first institution is ascribed to him.’

To punish transgressions of his law is not the essence of a malevolent being.  Darumulun ’watched the youths from the sky, prompt to punish, by disease or death, the breach of his ordinances,’ moral or ritual.  His name is too sacred to be spoken except in whispers, and the anthropologist will observe that the names of the human dead are also often tabooed.  But the divine name is not thus tabooed and sacred when the mere folklore about him is narrated.  The informants of Mr. Howitt instinctively distinguished between the mythology and the religion of Darumulun.[9] This distinction—­ the secrecy about the religion, the candour about the mythology—­is essential, and accounts for our ignorance about the inner religious beliefs of early races.  Mr. Howitt himself knew little till he was initiated.  The grandfather of Mr. Howitt’s friend, before the white men came to Melbourne, took him out at night, and, pointing to a star, said:  ’You will soon be a man; you see Bunjil [Supreme Being of certain tribes] up there, and he can see you, and all you do down here.’  Mr. Palmer, speaking of the Mysteries of Northern Australians (mysteries under divine sanction), mentions the nature of the moral instruction.  Each lad is given, ’by one of the elders, advice so kindly, fatherly, and impressive, as often to soften the heart, and draw tears from the youth.’  He is to avoid adultery, not to take advantage of a woman if he finds her alone, he is not to be quarrelsome.[10]

At the Mysteries Darumulun’s real name may be uttered, at other times he is ‘Master’ (Biamban) or ‘Father’ (Papang), exactly as we say ‘Lord’ and ‘Father.’

It is known that all these things are not due to missionaries, whose instructions would certainly not be conveyed in the Bora, or tribal mysteries, which, again, are partly described by Collins as early as 1798, and must have been practised in 1688.  Mr. Howitt mentions, among moral lessons divinely sanctioned, respect for old age, abstinence from lawless love, and avoidance of the sins so popular, poetic, and sanctioned by the example of Gods, in classical Greece.[11] A representation is made of the Master, Biamban; and