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Asked for the reason why of anything, the Arunta answer, 'It was so in the Alcheringa. Our tribe have a subsidiary myth corresponding to that of the Alcheringa.
When he had got their minds under his control, he chanted to them of the great days of the Alcheringa when they were a powerful fair-skinned race of giants, and had everything that their hearts could desire. He went on to tell of one misfortune after another which had befallen them: their bodies had grown small, their skins black, and droughts had changed the earth from a garden into a desert.
Also 'certain mythical ancestors, of the 'alcheringa, or dream-times, were celebrated; these real or ideal human beings appear to 'sink their identity in that of the object with which they are associated, and from which they are supposed to have originated. There appear also to be places haunted by 'spirit individuals, in some way mixed up with Totems, but nothing is said of sacrifice to these Manes.
Moreover, the women of the Euahlayi have some knowledge of, and some means of, mystic access to Byamee, though they call him by another name. Byamee, in the first place, is to the Euahlayi what the 'Alcheringa' or 'Dream time' is to the Arunta.
This is a kind of 'Alcheringa' myth, but whether this colossal man was Byamee or not, our tribe give, as the final answer to any question about the origin of customs, 'Because Byamee say so. Byamee declared his will, and that was and is enough for his children. And when he was passing on to fresh fields, he gave each kinship of the tribe he was leaving one of his totems.
But these tribes, too, are human, and what they now or lately were, the remote ancestors of the Greeks must once have been. All races have sought explanations of their own ritual in the adventures of the Dream Time, the Alcheringa, when beings of a more potent race, Gods or Heroes, were on earth, and achieved and endured such things as the rites commemorate.
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