Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/530

 472 Reviews.

is still tabooed. Among the northern tribes of Central Austra- lia, such as the Worgaia, the Warramunga, and the Walpari, the totem-animal of the mother's clan is still under taboo ; and the same rule applies in considerable measure to the Binbinga,, the Mara and the Anula; though in all these tribes descent is- reckoned on the father's side. The Warramunga, Binbinga, Mara, and Anula do not absolutely forbid marriages with the class which alternates with the mother's (that is to say, the class containing persons which bear her totem) ; but such marriages are rare, they are only contracted as secondary to more regular unions, and wives in such marriages are not called by the ordinary name of wife, but by words which really signify only a distant degree of relationship. It looks as though the taboo of the mother's clan and its totem were in all these cases still in force, but in most of them becoming enfeebled and begin- ning to disappear.

The hypothesis supposes, as I have just said, that the totem- clans were divided among the classes, so that the same totems were not represented in the two halves of either of the primary classes or phratries. This we find to be the case among the Mara and Anula, and though Messrs. Spencer and Gillen do not expHcitly state it with regard to the other tribes, from a fact which they do state concerning the Warramunga there is reason to infer it. According to Mathews' statement, among the Tjingilli, or Chingalee as he calls them, and some other tribes, the phratry is inherited in the female line while the totem passes in the male Une, with consequent differences in the arrangement of the classes from that of (say) the Arunta. This variation is inexplicable apart from the hypo- thesis of a change from maternal to paternal descent; and it should be noted that here the same partial relaxation of the matrimonial prohibition appears as that just mentioned among the Warramunga. Mathews' account, however, does not agree with that of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, for, according to the latter the matrimonial organisation of the Tjingilli is identical with that of the Arunta. More than that, according to the information collected by Dr. Howitt and by himself the or- ganisation of the Warramunga precisely agrees with his account