The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎654r] (198/239)

AMONG THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.
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by spirits of various sorts, “bogies in which they themselves
do not believe, but which are a strong moral aid in
dealing with refractory wives and wilful children.” To impress
this salutary belief on the feminine and youthful mind the men
act the part of the spirits, disguised in appropriate costumes. Thus
the spirit of the beech forests is represented by a man clad in moss
and the bark of trees; the spirit of the lichen-grown rocks is
played by an actor who is painted slate-colour, with daubs of red
and yellow clay; the spirit of clouds and mist is dressed all in
white, with a very long head partly made up of twigs, which are
covered with skin and painted. Till they are initiated into these
mysteries at the age of fourteen or so, the boys firmly believe in
the bogies, and no wonder, inasmuch as they have been chased
and scared by them. When the time of their initiation draws
near, the lads are seriously exhorted by their elders. They must
be keen hunters, and quick to avenge the spilt blood of their
family. They must be careful of their own bodies, despising
greed, and, above all, letting no woman share their inmost
thoughts. At a series of nocturnal meetings they then learn the
true nature of the “ moral aid ” by which their green unknowing
youth has been trained in the way it should go. They are in fact
introduced to the bogies, who turn out to be members of their own
family. Any boy or man who betrays the secret is quietly put
to death ; and the same fate overtakes any woman who is suspected
of knowing more than is good for her. 12
In regard to the precepts inculcated on Central Australian boys
at initiation, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen think it “ most probable
that they have originated in the first instance in association with
the purely selfish desire of the older men to keep all the best
things for themselves, and in no case whatever are they supposed
to have the sanction of a superior being.” 13 “As to the ‘ dis
covery ’ of a high ethical religion amongst the lowest savages there
is not, I am convinced, any such thing in Australia. The great
difficulty is that we have had statements made on the authority of
men like Gason. The latter was a police-trooper, I believe, who
was perfectly honest, but at the same time perfectly incapable of
dealing with matters such as these. In the days when the
evidence of Baiame and Daramulun was collected the importance
of securing minute and detailed information was really not
realised, nor was it imagined that there were men without any
so-called religious ideas ; and as I have endeavoured to point
out in one of our chapters, it is the easiest thing possible to be
(12) W S. Barclay, “The Land of Magellanes, with some Account of the ()na
and other Indians,” The Geographical Journal, xxiii. (1904), pp. 74 sq.
(13) Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 504.