Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/202

170 more brothers, or of two or more sisters, are in the relation of brother and sister to each other. This is also the case in tribes which have individual marriage, as well as in those who have marriage in the pirrauru manner.

I have just spoken of a woman being in the relation of mother to her sister's son, and I think that this may be likened to our term "step-mother," with this difference, that with us the "mother" and the "step-mother" cannot each be the wife of a man at the same time, while with the Dieri under the pirrauru marriage that is the case.

I think that I have now shown how the terms husband and wife, father and mother, son and brother, all arise out of the pirrauru family, and that the native terms include the group and also the individual to whom alone we apply our terms, for instance, father and son.

If I have not misunderstood the passage which I have quoted, Mr. Thomas means that tippa-malku has nothing to do with the classificatory system. That is so, and the reason seems to me quite clear. As I have said before, "betrothal," for that is the essence of tippa-malku, is an innovation on the pirrauru group-right, indeed may be the innovation which ultimately brought about the system of individual marriage in the other Australian tribes.

It is not out of place here to point out that tippa-malku is not a classificatory term, but defines the relation between two individuals.

I find at page 296 the following passage: "The group marriage, whose prior existence is asserted by Dr. Howitt, not only for the whole of Australia, but also for all countries in which the classificatory system is in use, cannot with any propriety be termed marriage at all; its proper name is 'modified promiscuity. According to this view all the people who stood in the noa relation to each other were de jure and de facto husbands and