[742] "The children below four or five years of age have neither soul nor future life," says Dawson. But the fact he thus relates is merely the absence of funeral rites for young children. We shall see the real meaning of this below.
[743] Dawson, p. 51; Parker, The Euahlayi, p. 35; Eylmann, p. 188.
[744] Nor. Tr., p. 542; Schürmann, The Aboriginal Tribes of Port Lincoln, in Woods, p. 235.
[745] This is the expression used by Dawson, p. 50.
[746] Strehlow, I, p. 15, n. 1; Schulze, loc. cit., p. 246; this is the theme of the myth of the vampire.
[747] Strehlow, I, p. 15; Schulze, p. 244; Dawson, p. 51. It is true that it is sometimes said that souls have nothing corporeal; according to certain testimony collected by Eylmann (p. 188), they are ohne Fleisch und Blut. But these radical negations leave us sceptical. The fact that offerings are not made to the souls of the dead in no way implies, as Roth thinks (Superstition, Magic, etc., § 65), that they do not eat.
[748] Roth, ibid., § 65; Nor. Tr., p. 530. It sometimes happens that the soul emits odours (Roth, ibid., § 68).
[749] Roth, ibid., § 67; Dawson, p. 51.
[750] Roth, ibid., § 65.
[751] Schürmann, Aborig. Tr. of Port Lincoln, in Woods, p. 235.