one of the properties of the priest, or medicine-man, which in England
has dwindled to a plaything?  Lastly, was this mystical instrument at
first employed in the rites of a civilised people like the Greeks, and
was it in some way borrowed or inherited by South Africans, Australians,
and New Mexicans?  Or is it a mere savage invention, surviving (like
certain other features of the Greek mysteries) from a distant stage of
savagery?  Our answer to all these questions is that in all probability
the presence of the [Greek], or bull-roarer, in Greek mysteries was a
survival from the time when Greeks were in the social condition of
Australians.

In the first place, the bull-roarer is associated with mysteries and
initiations.  Now mysteries and initiations are things that tend to
dwindle and to lose their characteristic features as civilisation
advances.  The rites of baptism and confirmation are not secret and
hidden; they are common to both sexes, they are publicly performed, and
religion and morality of the purest sort blend in these ceremonies.  There
are no other initiations or mysteries that civilised modern man is
expected necessarily to pass through.  On the other hand, looking widely
at human history, we find mystic rites and initiations numerous,
stringent, severe, and magical in character, in proportion to the lack of
civilisation in those who practise them.  The less the civilisation, the
more mysterious and the more cruel are the rites.  The more cruel the
rites, the less is the civilisation.  The red-hot poker with which Mr.
Bouncer terrified Mr. Verdant Green at the sham masonic rites would have
been quite in place, a natural instrument of probationary torture, in the
Freemasonry of Australians, Mandans, or Hottentots.  In the mysteries of
Demeter or Bacchus, in the mysteries of a civilised people, the red-hot
poker, or any other instrument of torture, would have been out of place.
But in the Greek mysteries, just as in those of South Africans, Red
Indians, and Australians, the disgusting practice of bedaubing the
neophyte with dirt and clay was preserved.  We have nothing quite like
that in modern initiations.  Except at Sparta, Greeks dropped the
tortures inflicted on boys and girls in the initiations superintended by
the cruel Artemis. {33}  But Greek mysteries retained the daubing with
mud and the use of the bull-roarer.  On the whole, then, and on a general
view of the subject, we prefer to think that the bull-roarer in Greece
was a survival from savage mysteries, not that the bull-roarer in New
Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa is a relic of
civilisation.

Let us next observe a remarkable peculiarity of the turndun, or
Australian bull-roarer.  The bull-roarer in England is a toy.  In
Australia, according to Howitt and Fison, {34} the bull-roarer is
regarded with religious awe.  'When, on lately meeting with two of the
surviving Kurnai, I spoke to them of the turndun, they first looked
cautiously round them to see that no one else was looking, and then
answered me in undertones.'  The chief peculiarity in connection with the
turndun is that women may never look upon it.  The Chepara tribe, who
call it bribbun, have a custom that, 'if seen by a woman, or shown by a
man to a woman, the punishment to both is _death_.'

Among the Kurnai, the sacred mystery of the turndun is preserved by a
legend, which gives a supernatural sanction to secrecy.  When boys go
through the mystic ceremony of initiation they are shown turnduns, or
bull-roarers, and made to listen to their hideous din.  They are then
told that, if ever a woman is allowed to see a turndun, the earth will
open, and water will cover the globe.  The old men point spears at the
boy's eyes, saying: 'If you tell this to any woman you will die, you will
see the ground broken up and like the sea; if you tell this to any woman,
or to any child, you will be killed!'  As in Athens, in Syria, and among
the Mandans, the deluge-tradition of Australia is connected with the
mysteries.  In Gippsland there is a tradition of the deluge.  'Some
children of the Kurnai in playing about found a turndun, which they took
home to the camp and showed the women.  Immediately the earth crumbled
away, and it was all water, and the Kurnai were drowned.'

In consequence of all this mummery the Australian women attach great
sacredness to the very name of the turndun.  They are much less
instructed in their own theology than the men of the tribe.  One woman
believed she had heard Pundjel, the chief supernatural being, descend in
a mighty rushing noise, that is, in the sound of the turndun, when boys
were being 'made men,' or initiated. {35}  On turnduns the Australian
sorcerers can fly up to heaven.  Turnduns carved with imitations of water-
flowers are used by medicine-men in rain-making.  New Zealand also has
her bull-roarers; some of them, carved in relief, are in the Christy
Museum, and one is engraved here.  I have no direct evidence as to the
use of these Maori bull-roarers in the Maori mysteries.  Their
employment, however, may perhaps be provisionally inferred.

One can readily believe that the New Zealand bull-roarer may be whirled
by any man who is repeating a Karakia, or 'charm to raise the wind':--

   Loud wind,
   Lasting wind,
   Violent whistling wind,
   Dig up the calm reposing sky,
      Come, come.

In New Zealand {36a} 'the natives regarded the wind as an indication of
the presence of their god,' a superstition not peculiar to Maori
religion.  The 'cold wind' felt blowing over the hands at spiritualistic
seances is also regarded (by psychical researchers) as an indication of
the presence of supernatural beings.  The windy roaring noise made by the
bull-roarer might readily be considered by savages, either as an
invitation to a god who should present himself in storm, or as a proof of
his being at hand.  We have seen that this view was actually taken by an
Australian woman.  The hymn called 'breath,' or haha, a hymn to the
mystic wind, is pronounced by Maori priests at the moment of the
initiation of young men in the tribal mysteries.  It is a mere