CORRESPONDENCE.
Last Words on Totemism, Marriage, and Religion.
(Vol. xxiii., pp. 103-11.)
[The following notes, intended for Folk-Lore, were found amongst Mr. Lang's papers after his sudden death, and are published here by kind permission of Mrs. Lang.—Ed.]
It is not possible for me here fully to discuss Lord Avebury's paper in Folk-Lore, xxiii., 1. Space is insufficient, and no reader could follow the question unless he carefully compared with my text Lord Avebury's recent book and my remarks on it in Folk-Lore, xxii., pp. 402-25. …
For the last three years I have written and re-written, again and again, a work on Totemism and Exogamy; but for various reasons,—partly the influx of new facts and new theories, partly weariness of controversy,—I do not expect to publish the volume. There is another reason: for such a book there is no public! But the chapter on my theory of totemic exogamy may perhaps be detachable; if so, Folk-Lore may give it hospitality? Already Lord Avebury and I are much of the same opinion; we do not, it seems, believe in exogamy as a legislative institution.
Religion is a larger topic still. I agree with Mr. Howitt, in his book of 1904, that Baiame, and the other All Fathers, and the notions about them were devised for themselves by the natives, independently of missionary teaching.[1] As to worship, Mr. Howitt found, not that, but the germs of it, in invocations of Daramulun, and dances round his effigy. If we found Attic maidens dancing round the effigy of Artemis, and invoking her by name, would we deny "worship" to the girls? I would not;
- ↑ [The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 504-6.]
