Myth, Ritual and Religion (Vol. 1&2). Andrew Lang

that a more common native explanation is based on kinship with the vegetable or plant which bestows the family surname. Sir George Gray mentions that the families use their plant or animal as a crest or kobong (totem), and he adds that natives never willingly kill animals of their kobong, holding that some one of that species is their nearest friend. The consequences of eating forbidden animals vary considerably. Sometimes the Boyl-yas (that is, ghosts) avenge the crime. Thus when Sir George Grey ate some mussels (which, after all, are not the crest of the Greys), a storm followed, and one of his black fellow improvised this stave:—

      Oh, wherefore did he eat the mussels?

       Now the Boyl-yas storms and thunders make;

       Oh, wherefore would he eat the mussels?

      (1) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.

      (2) Travels, ii. 225.

      (3) Lang, Lecture on Natives of Australia, p. 10.

      There are two points in the arrangements of these stocks of kindred named from plants and animals which we shall find to possess a high importance. No member of any such kindred may marry a woman of the same name and descended from the same object.(1) Thus no man of the Emu stock may marry an Emu woman; no Blacksnake may marry a Blacksnake woman, and so forth. This point is very strongly put by Mr. Dawson, who has had much experience of the blacks. "So strictly are the laws of marriage carried out, that, should any sign of courtship or affection be observed between those 'of one flesh,' the brothers or male relatives of the woman beat her severely." If the incestuous pair (though not in the least related according to our ideas) run away together, they are "half-killed"; and if the woman dies in consequence of her punishment, her partner in iniquity is beaten again. No "eric" or blood-fine of any kind is paid for her death, which carries no blood-feud. "Her punishment is legal."(2) This account fully corroborates that of Sir George Grey.(3)

      (1) Taplin, The Nerrinyeri. p. 2. "Every tribe, regarded by them as a family, has its ngaitge, or tutelary genius or tribal symbol, in the shape of some bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, or substance. Between individuals of the same tribe no marriage can take place." Among the Narrinyeri kindred is reckoned (p. 10) on the father's side. See also (p. 46) ngaitge = Samoan aitu. "No man or woman will kill their ngaitge," except with precautions, for food.

      (2) Op. cit., p. 28.

      (3) Ibid., ii. 220.

      Our conclusion is that the belief in "one flesh" (a kinship shared with the animals) must be a thoroughly binding idea, as the notion is sanctioned by capital punishment.

      Another important feature in Australian totemism strengthens our position. The idea of the animal kinship must be an ancient one in the race, because the family surname, Emu, Bandicoot, or what not, and the crest, kobong, or protecting and kindred animal, are inherited through the mother's side in the majority of stocks. This custom, therefore, belongs to that early period of human society in which the woman is the permanent and recognised factor in the family while male parentage is uncertain.(1) One other feature of Australian totemism must be mentioned before we leave the subject. There is some evidence that in certain tribes the wingong or totem of each man is indicated by a tattooed representation of it upon his flesh. The natives are very licentious, but men would shrink from an amour with a woman who neither belonged to their own district nor spoke their language, but who, in spite of that, was of their totem. To avoid mistakes, it seems that some tribes mark the totem on the flesh with incised lines.(2) The natives frequently design figures of some kind on the trees growing near the graves of deceased warriors. Some observers have fancied that in these designs they recognised the totem of the dead men; but on this subject evidence is by no means clear. We shall see that this primitive sort of heraldry, this carving or painting of hereditary blazons, is common among the Red Men of America.(3)

      (1) Cf. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht; M'Lennan, Primitive Marriage, passim; Encycl. Brit. s. v. Family.

      (2) Fison, op. cit., p. 66.

      (3) Among other recent sources see Howitt in "Organisation of Australian Tribes" (Transactions of Royal Society of Victoria, 1889), and Spencer and Gillen, Natives of Central Australia. In Central Australia there is a marked difference in the form of Totemism.

      Though a large amount of evidence might be added to that already put forward, we may now sum up the inferences to be drawn from the study of totemism in Australia. It has been shown (1) that the natives think themselves actually akin to animals, plants, the sun, and the wind, and things in general; (2) that those ideas influence their conduct, and even regulate their social arrangements, because (3) men and women of the kinship of the same animal or plant may not intermarry, while men are obliged to defend, and in case of murder to avenge, persons of the stock of the family or plant from which they themselves derive their family name. Thus, on the evidence of institutions, it is plain that the Australians are (or before the influence of the Europeans became prevalent were) in a state of mind which draws no hard and fast line between man and the things in the world. If, therefore, we find that in Australian myth, men, gods, beasts, and things all shift shapes incessantly, and figure in a coroboree dance of confusion, there will be nothing to astonish us in the discovery. The myths of men in the Australian intellectual condition, of men who hold long conversations with the little "native bear," and ask him for oracles, will naturally and inevitably be grotesque and confused.(1)

      (1) Brough Smyth, i. 447, on MS. authority of W. Thomas.

      It is "a far cry" from Australia to the West Coast of Africa, and it is scarcely to be supposed that the Australians have borrowed ideas and institutions from Ashantee, or that the people of Ashantee have derived their conceptions of the universe from the Murri of Australia. We find, however, on the West African Coast, just as we do in Australia, that there exist large local divisions of the natives. These divisions are spoken of by Mr. Bowditch (who visited the country on a mission in 1817) as nations, and they are much more populous and powerful (as the people are more civilised) than the local tribes of Australia. Yet, just as among the local tribes of Australia, the nations of the West African Coast are divided into stocks of kindred, each STOCK having its representatives in each NATION. Thus an Ashantee or a Fantee may belong to the same stock of kindred as a member of the Assin or Akini nation. When an Ashantee of the Annona stock of kindred meets a Warsaw man of the same stock they salute and acknowledge each other as brothers. In the same way a Ballarat man of the Kangaroo stock in Australia recognises a relative in a Mount Gambier man who is also a Kangaroo. Now, with one exception, all the names of the twelve stocks of West African kindreds, or at least all of them which Mr. Bowditch could get the native interpreters to translate, are derived from animals, plants and other natural objects, just as in Australia.(1) Thus Quonna is a buffalo, Abrootoo is a cornstalk, Abbradi a plantain. Other names are, in English, the parrot, the wild cat, red earth, panther and dog. Thus all the natives of this part of Africa are parrots, dogs, buffaloes, panthers, and so forth, just as the Australians are emus, iguanas, black cockatoos, kangaroos, and the rest. It is remarkable that there is an Incra stock, or clan of ants, in Ashantee, just as there was a race of Myrmidons, believed to be descended from or otherwise connected with ants, in ancient Greece. Though Bowditch's account of these West African family divisions is brief, the arrangement tallies closely with that of Australia. It is no great stretch of imagination to infer that the African tribes do, or once did, believe themselves to be of the kindred of the animals whose names they bear.(2) It is more or less confirmatory of this hypothesis that no family is permitted to use as food the animal from which it derives its name. We have seen that a similar rule prevails, as far as hunger and scarcity of victuals permit it to be obeyed, among the natives of Australia. The Intchwa stock in Ashantee and Fantee is particularly unlucky, because its members may not eat the dog, "much relished by native epicures, and therefore a serious privation". Equally to be pitied were the ancient Egyptians, who, if they belonged to the district of the sheep, might not eat mutton, which their neighbours, the Lycopolitae, devoured at pleasure. These restrictions appear to be connected with the almost universal dislike of cannibals to eat persons of their own kindred except as a pious duty. This law of the game in cannibalism has not yet been thoroughly examined, though we often hear of wars waged expressly for the purpose of securing food (human meat), while some South American tribes actually bred from captive women by way of securing constant supplies of permitted flesh.(3) When we find stocks, then,