Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/264

 226 Reviews.

of his maternal aunts (as we reckon) and all their brothers. More- over, the son of his father's sister (his cousin, as we should say) is also called tatana. M. Junod is of opinion that the reason for these strange conceptions of relationship, and others into which I cannot go for want of space, is, in the last resort, polygamy, that is to say, polygyny. This will not do. It might account for a man calling his mother's sister mother^ if that stood alone, because the husband of one sister has a prior right to the others. It does not account for his caUing his father's brother and his father's sister's son father. M. Junod here explains that these persons have a right to the widows of a deceased man ; hence they may become what we should call a man's step-fathers. But a man has also, during the husband's lifetime, certain marital privileges over his mother's brother's wives, which are not accounted for by this explanation. Nothing short of the growth of the present social organisation out of group-marriage based on female kinship will explain the facts.

On every page of the book there are subjects on which I might pause to call attention to considerations of importance for students of the evolution of culture. It is packed full of interest. Choice, however, must be made ; and I turn for a few words on the religion of the Ba-ronga. Naturally, as a missionary, M. Junod has not been initiated into any secret society, if such exist. Science knows little of the secret societies of Africa, because they are so often exploited by traders for purposes of business, and however much a trader knows he will not tell, since that would be to spoil the prospects of trade. What little we do know points to the belief that, whatever the value of the secret societies for tribal organisation and methods of administration, they do not afford the insight into religion given by the mysteries of the Australians and the North American aborigines.

The effective gods are beyond doubt, says M. Junod, the spirits of ancestors. The great gods, the gods of the country, are the ancestors of the reigning chief. The gods of the family are the ancestors of the family. They are manes, familiar spirits recalling the lares and penafes of the Romans. Besides these, there are gods of the bush, spirits of persons buried away from the villages, probably strangers who have met with death by accident, and whose embittered ghosts attack and torment wayfarers. Above the gods known and named by people in general exists a power,