Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/52

 amicable separation does not create any ill feeling between the parties, as the woman is always kind to her first husband without causing any jealousy on the part of the second. Such transactions, although lawful, may not be approved of by the woman's relatives, and she is liable to be speared by her brother.

A single woman or widow belonging to a chief's family, can, with his consent, marry another chief, or his son, by simply sitting down in his wuurn beside his wife, who cannot prevent the match. But the first wife is always the mistress.

A young chief who cannot get a wife, and falls in love with one belonging to a chief who has more than two, can, with her consent, challenge the husband to single combat, and, if he defeats him, he makes her his legal wife; but the defeated husband never afterwards speaks to her.

A man falling in love with a young woman who will not consent to marry him, tries to get a lock of her hair, and, should he obtain it, he covers it with fat and red clay, and carries it about with him for one year. The knowledge of this so depresses the woman that she pines away. Should she die, her relatives and friends attribute her death to his having cast a spell over her, and they punish the man severely, and keep up enmity against him for a long time. In consequence of this superstition, the natives always burn their superfluous hair in a fire outside their dwellings; never in the domestic fire, as the remains of it would get among their food.

When a wife treats her husband with such persistent disrespect or unkindness as to make him wish to get quit of her, he casts a spell over her in the following manner. While she is asleep he cuts off a lock of her hair, and ties it to the bone hook of his 'spear thrower,' and covers it with a coating of gum. Early next morning he goes to a neighbouring tribe, and stays with them. At the first great meeting of the tribes he gives the 'spear thrower' to a friend, who sticks it upright before the camp fire every night, and when it falls over he considers that a sign that his wife is dead. But until he is assured by a messenger that such is the case, he will not return to his tribe. In the meantime, as the wife has not been legally separated from her husband, she cannot marry; and as she is constantly subjected to the sneers and taunts of her friends, she ultimately visits her husband, apologizes for her conduct, and brings him home. As an earnest of reconciliation and mutual confidence the spear thrower is broken and thrown into a water-hole.

After marriage, the women are compelled to do all the hard work of erecting