[337] W. E. Roth, North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 5 (Brisbane, 1903), pp. 18, 23, §§ 68, 83. We are reminded of the old Greek saying to be born “of an oak or a rock” (Homer, Odyssey, xix. 163). See A. B. Cook, “Oak and Rock,” Classical Review, xv. (1901) pp. 322–326. In Samoa, a child sometimes received as his god for life the deity who chanced to be invoked at the moment of his birth, whether that was his father’s or his mother’s god. See G. Turner, Samoa, p. 79.
[338] See below, pp. [183] sq.
[339] Lieut.-Colonel D. Collins, Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, Second Edition (London, 1804), pp. 353, 372 sqq. The Cammeray of whom Collins speaks are no doubt the tribe now better known as the Kamilaroi. Carrahdy, which he gives as the native name for a high priest, is clearly the Kamilaroi kuradyi, “medicine-man” (W. Ridley, Kamilaroi and other Australian Languages, Sydney, 1875, p. 158).
[340] If the possession of the foreskin conferred on the possessor a like power over the person to whom it had belonged, we can readily understand why the Israelites coveted the foreskins of their enemies the Philistines (1 Samuel xviii. 25–27, 2 Samuel iii. 14). Professor H. Gunkel interprets a passage of Ezekiel (xxxii. 18–32) as contrasting the happy lot of the circumcised warrior in the under world with the misery of his uncircumcised foe in the same place, and confesses himself unable to see why circumcision should be thought to benefit the dead. See H. Gunkel, “Über die Beschneidung im alten Testament,” Archiv für Papyrusforschung, ii. (1903) p. 21. (Prof. Gunkel’s paper was pointed out to me by my friend Mr. W. Wyse.) The benefit, on the theory here suggested, was very substantial, since it allowed the dead to come to life again, the grave being a bourne from which only uncircumcised travellers fail, sooner or later, to return. But I confess that Prof. Gunkel’s explanation of the passage seems to me rather far-fetched.
[341] G. Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery, ii. 335.
[342] See above, pp. [28] sqq.
[343] J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 62; J. F. Mann, in Proceedings of the Geographical Society of Australia, i. (1885) p. 48.
[344] E. J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia (London, 1845), ii. 345 sq.; W. E. Roth, Ethnological Studies, pp. 165 sq.; J. Mathew, Eaglehawk and Crow, p. 122; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 505 sqq.
[345] Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 506.
[346] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 497. Compare id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 506.