Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/422

402 in a rough way, a prohibition on marriages within the generation. Each name denoted coevals; "the old ones," "the young ones," their names often mean (Cunow). In Australia the young and the old are marked out by degrees of initiation, by duties and services, and by taboos on certain sorts of food. These taboos in the wear and tear of the struggle of the young men and the old, also applied to marriage. The strong point of Herr Cunow's theory is that the names for the classes do, in many cases, mean "big" and "little," or "young" and "old," a point omitted by Dr. Durkheim in criticising the hypothesis. Dr. Durkheim prefers a theory of residence with the tribe of the female parent, shifting in each generation. Meanwhile, what is needed above everything is philological analysis of the names of the "phratries," "classes," and terms for relationships, supposed, I think erroneously, to denote a past of "group marriage." Without this analysis all our theories must be tentative and hazardous.

Meanwhile, by this time, the tribes perfectly understand, and can express, real relationships by blood, as understood among ourselves, and also, as a rule, object, as we do, to too near consanguineous marriages of "too near flesh." This is the result of training in the rules, and of reflection on them.