The following short account will, however, give an idea of the state of religious feeling among the aborigines, as far as can be ascertained. And, in consequence of the rapid and steady decrease of the native tribes, it is possible that our knowledge of this subject will never be greater than it is at present.
In the first place, there are no grounds for thinking that the aborigines believe in any one Supreme Deity, nor, in fact, in a deity of any kind whatever. As is usual with most savage nations, their belief in supernatural beings is limited to those who are capable of doing mischief, and, although the conception of a beneficent spirit which will do good never seems to enter an Australian’s mind, he believes fully, in his misty fashion, in the existence of many evil spirits which will do harm.
Of these there are many. One of them is the Arlak, a being which takes the shape of a man. It is only seen at night, and is in the habit of watching for stragglers in the dark, seizing them and carrying them off. Several natives told Mr. M’Gillivray that they had seen the arlak; and one man, who had summoned enough courage to fight it when it attacked him, showed the marks of the demon’s teeth upon his body. Fortunately, the arlak cannot endure light, and therefore the natives, if they have to go the smallest distance in the dark, take a fire-stick in one hand and a weapon of some sort in the other.
One kind of evil spirit, which is very much dreaded by the aborigines, is the one in whom death is personified. He is short, thick, very ugly, and has a disagreeable smell. The natives of the Moorundi district believe in a native spirit, wonderfully similar in attributes to the Necker of German mythology. Although, according to their accounts, it is very common, they have great difficulty in describing it, and, as far as can be ascertained from their statements, it is like a huge star-fish. This demon inhabits the fresh water, or there might have been grounds for believing it to be merely an exaggeration of the cuttle-fish.
Throughout the greater part of Australia is found the belief in the Bunyip, a demon which infests woods, and which has been seen, as is said, not only by natives but by white men. The different accounts of the animal vary extremely. Some who have seen it aver it to be as large as a horse, to have a pair of eyes as big as saucers, and a pair of enormous horns.
Others give a very different account of it, and one of the Barrabool Hill natives gave a very animated description of the dreaded bunyip. He illustrated his lecture by a spirited drawing, in which the bunyip was represented as having a long neck and head, something like that of the giraffe, a thick flowing mane, and two short and massive fore-legs, each of which was armed with four powerful talons. The entire body was covered with strong scales, overlapping each other like those of the hawksbill turtle. This creature he represented as half beast, half demon, and vaunted the superior courage of his ancestors, who ventured to oppose this terrible creature as it lay in wait for their wives and children, and drove it out of the reeds and bush into the water whence it came.
Thinking that some large and now extinct beast might have lived in Australia, which might have been traditionally known to the aborigines, scientific men have taken particular pains to ransack those portions of the country which they could reach, in hopes of finding remains which might be to Australia what those of the megatherium and other huge monsters are to the Old World. Nothing of the kind has, however, been found. Some very large bones were once discovered on the banks of a shallow salt lagoon (just the place for the bunyip), but when sent to the British Museum they were at once found to be the remains of a gigantic kangaroo. At present, the legend of the bunyip stands on a level with that of the kraken—every native believes it, some aver that they have seen it, but no one has ever discovered the least tangible proof of its existence.
To these evil spirits the natives attribute every illness or misfortune, and in consequence are anxious to avoid or drive them away. All meteors are reckoned by them among the evil spirits, and are fancifully thought to be ghosts which multiply by self-division. The aborigines think, however, that by breathing as loudly as they can, and repeating some cabalistic words, they disarm the demons of their power.
They have one very curious belief,—namely, that any one who ventured to sleep on the grave of a deceased person, he would ever afterward be freed from the power of evil spirits. The ordeal is, however, so terrible that very few summon up sufficient courage to face it. “During that awful sleep the spirit of the deceased would visit him, seize him by the throat, and, opening him, take out his bowels, which it would afterward replace, and close up the wound! Such as are hardy enough to go through this terrible ordeal—encounter the darkness of the night and the solemnity of the grave—are thenceforth ‘koradjee’ men, or priests, and practise sorcery and incantations upon the others of their tribe.”
In Southern Australia, the natives believe that the sun and moon are human beings, who once inhabited the earth. The planets are dogs belonging to the moon, who run about her; and the various constellations are groups of children. An eclipse of either the sun or moon is looked upon as a terrible calamity, being sure to be the forerunner of disease and death.