The Eternal Belief in Immortality & Worship of the Dead. James George Frazer

they of the creature, that in speaking of it amongst themselves they will not use its proper name of Wollunqua but call it instead urkulu nappaurinnia, because, as they told Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, if they were to name it too often by its real name they would lose control over the beast and it would rush forth and devour them.¹³⁵ Thus the natives do not distinguish the Wollunqua from the rest of their actually existing totems, as we do: they have never beheld him with their bodily eyes, yet to them he is just as real as the kangaroos which they see hopping along the sands, as the flies which buzz about their heads in the sunshine, or as the cockatoos which flap screaming past in the thickets. How real this belief in the mythical snake is with these savages, was brought vividly home to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they visited, in company with some natives, the deep and lonely pool among the rocky hills in which the awful being is supposed to reside. Before they approached the spot, the natives had been talking and laughing freely, but when they drew near the water their voices were hushed and their demeanour became solemn. When all stood silent on the brink of the deep still pool, enclosed by a sandy margin on one side and by a line of red rocks on the other, two old men, the leaders of the totemic group of the Wollunqua, went down to the edge of the water and, with bowed heads, addressed the Wollunqua in whispers, asking him to remain quiet and do them no harm, for they were mates of his, and had brought two great white men to see where he lived and to tell them all about him. "We could plainly see," add Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "that it was all very real to them, and that they implicitly believed that the Wollunqua was indeed alive beneath the water, watching them, though they could not see him."¹³⁶

      Religious character of the belief in the Wollunqua.

      I need hardly point out what a near approach all this is to religion in the proper sense of the word. Here we have a firm belief in a purely imaginary being who is necessarily visible to the eye of faith alone, since I think we may safely assume that a water-snake, supposed to be many miles long and capable of reaching up to the sky, has no real existence either on the earth or in the waters under the earth. Yet to these savages this invisible being is just as real as the actually existing animals and men whom they perceive with their bodily senses; they not only pray to him but they propitiate him with a solemn ritual; and no doubt they would spurn with scorn the feeble attempts of shallow sceptics to question the reality of his existence or the literal truth of the myths they tell about him. Certainly these savages are far on the road to religion, if they have not already passed the Rubicon which divides it from the common workaday world. If an unhesitating faith in the unseen is part of religion, the Warramunga people of the Wollunqua totem are unquestionably religious.

Footnote 108: (return)

      On the zoological peculiarities of Australia regarded as effects of its geographical isolation, see Alfred Newton, Dictionary of Birds (London, 1893–96), pp. 317–319. He observes (p. 318) that "the isolation of Australia is probably the next oldest in the world to that of New Zealand, having possibly existed since the time when no mammals higher than marsupials had appeared on the face of the earth."

Footnote 109: (return)

      For details see Totemism and Exogamy, i. 314 sqq.

Footnote 110: (return)

      Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904), p. 491.

Footnote 111: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. xi.

Footnote 112: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 545.

Footnote 113: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 546.

Footnote 114: (return)

      Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 119–127, 335–338, 552; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 145–153, 162, 271, 330 sq., 448–451, 512–515. Compare Totemism and Exogamy, i. 188 sqq.

Footnote 115: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 147.

Footnote 116: (return)

      See Totemism and Exogamy, i. 155 sqq., iv. 40 sqq.

Footnote 117: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 123, 126.

Footnote 118: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 119–127, 128 sqq., 513; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 145 sqq., 257 sqq.

Footnote 119: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 132–135; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 258, 268 sqq.

Footnote 120: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 128, 134.

Footnote 121: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 134 sq.

Footnote 122: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 133, 135; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 269.

Footnote 123: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 267.

Footnote 124: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 139 sq.

Footnote 125: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 273.

Footnote 126: (return)

      Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 141.

Footnote