The Euahlayi Tribe: A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia

d Wir djuri 'Baiame'), it is necessary to give a preliminary account of the beliefs entertained concerning him. The name Byamee (usually spelled Baiame) occurs in Euahlayi, Kamilaroi, and Wir dj

name of the All Father it is not supposed to be used by women or by the uninitiated. If it is necessary to speak to them of Byamee, he is called Boyjerh, which means Father, just as in the Theddora tribe the women speak of Darramulun as PAPANG, 'Father.' [Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 493.] Among the Euahlayi both women and the uninitiated use byamee, the

e in his first Boorah, or initiation. If he was early grey, say at thirty, in 1846, that takes his initiation back to 1830, when, as a matter of fact, we have contemporary evidence to the belief in Byamee, who is not of missionary importat

shed in 1872. He credited the natives, in some regions, with belief in, and dances performed in honour of, a 'Good Being,' and denied that the belief and rites were the result of European influence. [Waitz, ANTHROPOLOGIE DER NATUR-V(tm)LKER, vol. vi. pp. 796-798. Leipzig, 1872.] Mr. Tylor, admitting to some extent that the belief now exists, attributed it in part to the influence of missionaries and of white settlers. [Journal, Anthropological Institute, vol. xxi. p. 2

erived, Mr. Howitt holds, from Europeans, or developed out of ancestor-worship, which does not exist in the tribes. The belief is concealed from women, but communicated to lads at their initiation. [Howitt, NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA, pp. 488-508.] The belief, in

which only the fully initiated may sing; an old black, as will later appear, did chant this old lay, now no longer understood, to myself and my hus

t whether this colossal man was Byamee or not, our tribe give, as the final answer to any question about the origin of customs, 'Because Byamee say so.' Byamee declared his will, and that was and is enough for his children. At the Boorah, or initiatory ceremonies, he is proclaimed as 'Father of All, whose laws the tribes are now obeying.' Byamee, at least in one myth (told also by the Wir djuri), is the original source of all totems, and of the law that people of the same totem may not intermarry, 'however far apart their hunting-grounds.' I heard first in a legend, then received confirmation from all old blac

Byamee, Birrahgnooloo, is claimed as the mother of all, for she, like him, h

e best loved and made his companion, giving her power and position which no other held. She too, like him, is partially crystallised in the sky-camp, where they are together; the upper parts of their bodies are as on earth; to her, t

sons, just as later Greece attributed the walls of Tiryns to the Cyclops, or as Glasgow Cathedral has been explained in legend as the work of the Picts. Byamee also established the rule that there shoul

ter, that prayers for the souls of the dead used to be addressed to Byamee

for rain. Such an one has but to run out when the clo

rboor. Gull

down. Wate

he last possible child of a woman c

the country wanted rain. In answer he had taken up a handful of crystal pebbles and thrown them from the sky down into the water in a stone basi

icine man, or Wirreenun, present addresses a prayer to Byamee,

ve prayed, to Byamee on any occasions except a

as to the rewards and punishments of the future life will be given in their place. Baiame's troubles with a kin

ate a kind of 'religion,' whether 'a recognised religion' or not. There is necessarily, of course, an absence of temples and of priests, and I have found no trace or vestige of sacrifice. What may be said on the affirmative side as to the religious as

also the area where there has been the advance from group marriage to individual marriage; from descent in the female line to that in the male line; where the primitive organisation under the class system has be

Wiimbaio tribe [IBID. p. 489] to the Wotjobaluk tribe,[NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA, pp. 120, 490.] to the Kamilaroi, to the Ta-Ta-thi,

in any way associated with advance in social organisation, for Messrs. Spencer and Gillen cannot find a trace of it in more than one of the central and northern tribes, which hav

ther. We have tribes of the highest social advancement who are said to show no vestige of the belief, and we have tribes also socially advanced who hold the belief with great vigour. In these circumstances, authenticated b