Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/210

178 along in my communication to Folk-Lore also termed group-marriage, then I say that I have most fully considered all the objections taken by Mr. Lang, in his work and also some therein, which Mr. Lang says were suggested by Mr. Thomas. My reply to Mr. Lang has been for some time with the Anthropological Institute, and will, I assume, appear in due course. Meanwhile, the present paper may be taken as an instalment of my views. Mr. Thomas at page 301 says: "… In the Lake Eyre tribes alone does a name exist for polygamy; all the other tribes cited by Dr. Howitt have terms corresponding to noa; none has anything corresponding to pirrauru, dilpa-malli, and piraungaru. That alone is conclusive evidence of differential evolution among the Lake Eyre tribes. …"

I again note that Mr. Thomas uses the term "polygamy," and the context seems to require that it really means pirrauru. At page 299 he says, and correctly: "In a sense of course the people standing in the relation of pirrauru are a group; the relationship is a combination of polyandry and polygyny." I think that in this passage Mr. Thomas replies to some of his strictures on me.

It is not a fact that all the tribes quoted by me have terms corresponding to noa, for the Kurnai, for instance, have terms which do not. I think that Mr. Thomas has overlooked my argument, that all the tribes which now have individual marriage, had at one time a marriage similar to pirrauru, and that having passed out of it, they yet retain those terms which denote it. It would surely be a very remarkable thing if they still retained those other terms which Mr. Thomas cites, no longer having that which they denote. The "pirraiiru" stage having passed away, the analogous terms in their languages, to those given by Mr. Thomas, would be no longer used. It is a fortunate circumstance that the