do his bidding, such as Wallahgooroonbooan, whose voice is heard through the gayandy (the Tundan or Rule Roarer?). Byamee is now (like the Fijian Ndegei) "fixed and frozen to permanence" on his crystal rock in the land of rest. The souls of those who keep his law go to him, the wicked go to Eleanbah Wundah, the native Inferno. All this is in direct contradiction to the odd theory that morals, among low savages, have no religious sanction. That theory cannot long resist the impact of accumulating evidence. We are, in truth, all alike, and from an unknown antiquity the Maker of men has also been their Judge.
I have elsewhere argued (in "The Making of Religion") that such beings as Byamee are not the ghosts of an ancestor carried to the highest power. Ancestor worship I do not discover in Australia. Mr. Dawson reports that the habit of ghost-feeding (the supposed origin of religion) is "recent," and that the blacks call it "white fellows' gammon."[1]
Mr. Dawson found a deity called Pirnmeheal, a good being. "The aborigines say that the missionaries and government protectors have given them a dread of Pirnmeheal; and they are sorry that the young people, and many of the old, are now afraid of a being who never did any harm to their forefathers." Mr. Dawson received his information in the native languages, and sifted it carefully. We have seen what he regards as the result of the teaching of the white devils, missionaries and others.
- ↑ "Australian Aborigines,'" pp. 50, 51. Melbourne. 1881
