the letters. They are very valuable; and the editor, it may be supposed, will not object to a piece of history so important to Australians being transferred to these pages.
The superstitions and tales and legends of the Australian natives, the folk-lore of this people, have never until within the last few years engaged attention. A long time ago—long before it was anticipated that any such researches would have valuable results—I sought to gather together all the tales and legends of the natives of Victoria, and not without a certain measure of success; but it is believed the old people could have related many that are not recorded or mentioned in this volume. The Rev. Mr. Bulmer, the late Mr. Thomas, the Rev. Mr. Hagenauer, Mr. John Green, and Mr. Alfred W. Howitt, have furnished those which now appear; and scientific men who study comparative mythology will regard their contributions with the greatest interest. To the Rev. Mr. Hartmann I am indebted for a portion of an old native story, that of Duan (the squirrel) and Weenbulain (the spider). It is very valuable. It is a tale widely known and therefore ancient. A new story in these times is not often carried far, and is likely to be soon forgotten, and this it may be supposed had its origin with others, certainly ancient, which give an account of the performances of various beasts and birds when they were in the estimation of the savages the equals or the superiors of men.
Birds and beasts are the gods of the Australians.[1]
The eagle, the crow, the mopoke, and the crane figure prominently in all their tales. The native cat is now the moon; and the kangaroo, the opossum, the emu, the crow, and many others who distinguished themselves on earth, are set in the sky and appear as bright stars.
Fire was stolen. And this and all the legends of the natives remind one of the folk-lore of the Aryan or Indo-European race. The fables of the Australians and their references to the contests between the eagle and other birds are exactly like those known to the Saxons in every part of Europe. The eagle, the owl, the wren, the robin redbreast, the woodpecker, and the stork play nearly the same parts in European tales as the eagle, the crow, the mopoke, and the little bird with a red mark over his tail in Australian legends.
- ↑ "Let us not think too meanly of the intelligence of our simple ancestors because they could regard brutes as gods. It was an error not peculiar to them, but common to all infant races of men. The early traditions of every people point back to a period when man had not yet risen to a clear conception of his own pre-eminence in the scale of created life. The power of discerning differences comes later into play than that of perceiving resemblances, and the primeval man, living in the closest communion with nature, must have begun with a strong feeling of his likeness to the brutes who shared with him so many wants, passions, pleasures, and pains. Hence the attribution of human voice and reason to birds and beasts in fable and story, and the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. To this feeliog of fellowship there would afterwards be superadded a sense of a mysterious something inherent in the nature of brutes, which was lacking in that of man. He found himself so vastly surpassed by them in strength, agility, and keenness of sense; they evinced such a marvellous foreknowledge of coming atmospheric changes which he could not surmise; they went so straight to their mark, guided by an instinct to him incomprehensible, that he might well come to look upon them with awe as beings superior to himself, and surmise in their wondrous manifestations the workings of something divine."—Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-Lore, by Walter K. Kelly, 1863.
