eable surface, on which they
paint the sacred design of the emu totem, especially the parts of the
bird which they like best to eat, namely, the fat and the eggs. Round
this painting the men sit and sing. Afterwards performers wearing long
head-dresses to represent the long neck and small head of the emu, mimic
the appearance of the bird as it stands aimlessly peering about in all
directions." (1)

(1) The Golden Bough i, 85--with reference to Spencer and
Gillen's Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 179, 189.

Thus blood sacrifice comes in; and--(whether this has ever actually
happened in the case of the Central Australians I know not)--we can
easily imagine a member of the Emu tribe, and disguised as an actual
emu, having been ceremonially slaughtered as a firstfruits and promise
of the expected and prayed-for emu-crop; just as the same certainly
HAS happened in the case of men wearing beast-masks of Bulls or Rams
or Bears being sacrificed in propitiation of Bull-gods, Ram-gods or
Bear-gods or simply in pursuance of some kind of magic to favor the
multiplication of these food-animals.

"In the light of totemistic ways of thinking we see plainly enough the
relation of man to food-animals. You need or at least desire flesh food,
yet you shrink from slaughtering 'your brother the ox'; you desire his
mana, yet you respect his tabu, for in you and him alike runs the common
life-blood. On your own individual responsibility you would never kill
him; but for the common weal, on great occasions, and in a fashion
conducted with scrupulous care, it is expedient that he die for his
people, and that they feast upon his flesh." (1)

(1) Themis, p. 140.

In her little book Ancient Art and Ritual (1) Jane Harrison describes
the dedication of a holy Bull, as conducted in Greece at Elis, and at
Magnesia and other cities. "There at the annual fair year by year the
stewards of the city bought a Bull 'the finest that could be got,' and
at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seed-time (? April)
Bull was led in procession at the head of which went the chief priest
and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and sacrificer,
and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull that nothing
unlucky might come near him. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer for
'the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the women
and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of grain
and all