Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/198

 THE NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA.

BY A. W. HOWITT, D.SC.

read with some interest, and at times with a little surprise, the contribution to Folk-Lore of September last by Mr. N. W. Thomas, entitled "Dr. Howitt's Defence of Group-Marriage."

Certain parts require notice, and I shall take them seriatim so far as can conveniently be done.

I must consider, in the first place, an important passage at pp. 294-5, which is as follows:

"In his work on the tribes of South-east Australia, Dr. Howitt asserts in the most unqualified manner (pp. 177-179, N.T.S.E.A.) that a woman must enter into the tippa-malku relation before she can receive a pirrauru or accessory spouse."

This is correctly quoted, with the exception that the expression "accessory spouse" belongs to Mr. Thomas.

There is, however, another paragraph at page 182 of my Native Tribes, which runs as follows: "But commonly it is not merely two pairs of pirrauru who are allotted to each other, but the whole of the marriageable or married people, even those who are already pirraurus, are re-allotted, the kandri ceremony being performed for batches of them at the same time."

These two statements are inconsistent with each other. A girl becomes marriageable after she has been initiated to womanhood at the Wilpadrina ceremony, and may then