Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/141

 Revieim. 109

with a view to securing prior rights. Moreover, on Mr. Thomas' own showing (p. 129) tippa-malku betrothal is a ceremony, so that ceremonies are performed in both cases. Both contentions, therefore (namely, that founded on the performance of a cere- mony, and that founded on the requirement that the woman shall be already a tippa-malku spouse), fall to the ground.

I have only space for one other point. Although it is true that with the development of patria potestas a widow tends to pass to the heir along with the property of a predecessor, there is abundant evidence from many parts of the world that this was not her earlier condition. It is not, as a rule, her condition in Australia. In Australia, as elsewhere, the group of kinsmen, which includes the husband, acquires rights in the woman by her marriage ; those rights involve correlative duties ; and while many of those rights and duties are monopolized during the husband's lifetime by him, they expand on his death among the group, resulting in the actual state of society in a new appropriation by another member of the group. The duties are equally insisted on with the rights; he who exercises the latter is charged with the performance of the former. This rule seems to remain even where the widow is regarded (for instance, among many of the African peoples) as little more than part of the property of the deceased. But in Australia it is sometimes even more insisted on. This is the solution of one of the apparent contradictions pointed out in a note (p. 135) of Dr. Hewitt's statements. Dr. Howitt's statement {^South-Eastern Tribes, p. 281) is general. In the Dalebura tribe, however, while the widow passes to the husband's brother, it is not necessarily as wife; if he so please he may become her husband, but in any case he is bound to be her protector. Similarly, we know, among some of the tribes of Western Victoria the property of the deceased was divided among his widow and children, but if she had offspring it was the duty of the brother of the deceased to marry her, because he was bound to protect her and rear the children. So far as I am aware, the Wotjobaluk are the only tribe where any objection to take the widow is reported.

Some further care should have been exercised in the correction of the proofs. The want of it has led to accidental mis-