Next Baiame is attacked in his character as the Creator. Here we must get rid of the Rev. Mr. Ridley's evidence, which is quoted from Mr. Brough Smyth (vol. ii.,p. 285). Mr. Ridley, I admit, is a missionary! His blacks "are acquainted with English, and have therefore presumably come into contact with English ideas" (Folk-Lore, p.301), which they are notoriously eager to adopt in religion. Very good, but it was in 1854 that Mr. Ridley, who had learned Kamilaroi, and who lived with the blacks for two or three years, put the question "Do you know Baiame?" The answer was (not in English), "Kamil Zaia Zummi Baiame, Zaia Winuzgulda" ("I have not seen Baiame, I have heard, or perceived, him"). The same answer was given by a black eighteen years later (1872), to whom Mr. Ridley "had never spoken before." "If asked who made the sky, the earth, the animals, they always answer 'Baiame'" (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1872, pp. 268, 269). Impressed by these replies, Mr. Ridley, in 1856, introduced Baiame as equivalent to our God, or Creator, into certain primers for missionaries (Gurre Kamilaroi, Ridley, Sydney, 1856). Jehovaka and Eloi, attempted about 1830-40 by Mr. Threlkeld, did not take with the natives, nor did Immanueli, which Mr. Ridley endeavoured to introduce himself.[1] Mr. Ridley, in 1855, found that the blacks on the Barwan and Namoi "say there is one Being who made all things, whom they never saw, though they hear his voice in the thunder. They speak of him by the name 'Baiame,' and those who have learned that 'God' is the name by which we speak of the Creator, say that 'Baiame is God.'" But, at this date, Mr. Ridley "never heard them speak of Baiame as a ruler, nor ascribe wisdom and goodness to him." They knew Daramulun as "author of disease and medical
- ↑ Lang's Queensland, 1861, p. 435. See also Mr. Threlkeld, An Australian Language. This is of 1892, but contains reprints of Mr. Threlkeld's works of 1831-1857.
