without ascertaining that the wine-god exercised judicial functions, and
was a god of the sun. These derivations, 'shocking to common sense,' are
to be distrusted as part of the intoxication of new learning. Some
Assyrian scholars actually derive Hades from Bit Edi or Bit Hadi--'though,
unluckily,' says Tiele, 'there is no such word in the Assyrian text.' On
the whole topic Tiele's essay {28} deserves to be consulted. Granting,
then, that elements in the worship of Dionysus, Aphrodite, and other
gods, may have been imported with the strange AEgypto-Assyrian vases and
jewels of the Sidonians, we still find the same basis of rude savage
ideas. We may push back a god from Greece to Phoenicia, from Phoenicia
to Accadia, but, at the end of the end, we reach a legend full of myths
like those which Bushmen tell by the camp-fire, Eskimo in their dark
huts, and Australians in the shade of the gunyeh--myths cruel, puerile,
obscene, like the fancies of the savage myth-makers from which they
sprang.




THE BULL-ROARER.
A Study of the Mysteries.


As the belated traveller makes his way through the monotonous plains of
Australia, through the Bush, with its level expanses and clumps of grey-
blue gum trees, he occasionally hears a singular sound. Beginning low,
with a kind of sharp tone thrilling through a whirring noise, it grows
louder and louder, till it becomes a sort of fluttering windy roar. If
the traveller be a new comer, he is probably puzzled to the last degree.
If he be an Englishman, country-bred, he says to himself, 'Why, that is