THE IDEAS AND SOURCES OF MYTH. 43 



Milligan and Nixon tell us that the Tasmanians 

 believed in the existence of evil and sometimes 

 of avenging spirits, destroyers of the guilty. They 

 supposed that the shades of their friends or enemies 

 returned, and caused good or evil to befal them ; 

 and according to Milligan there were four kinds of 

 spirits. Purely superstitious rites were used for 

 marriage. Old women and witches were often the 

 arbiters of peace and war between the tribes, and they 

 had the right of pardoning. Sorcerers intervened 

 in many social acts, and before beginning their opera- 

 tions and incantations they revolved the mysterious 

 Mooyumkarr, an oval piece of wood with a cord, which 

 was certainly connected with phallic superstitions. 

 Bonwick asserts that on many private and public 

 occasions, the more skilled sorcerers called up spirits 

 with appropriate ceremonies and formulas. They 

 were powerful, and produced diseases, and were able 

 to exert malign influence, and the urine of women,, 

 human blood, and ashes were superstitiously used as 

 remedies against their spells. 



The Tasmanian who wished to hurt or bewitch 

 any one, procured something belonging to his enemy, 

 and especially his hair; this was enveloped in fat 

 and then exposed to the action of fire, and it was 

 thought that as it melted, the man himself would 

 waste away. They feared lest the evil spirit evoked 

 by the enchantments of an enemy might creep behind 

 them in the night to steal away the renal fat, an 



