Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/215

Rh "wife." Since 1 and 2 are brothers, and as 1 is the pirrauru of 6, it also includes "husband's brother." As 5 and 2 are pirrauru, and as 2 is the husband of 6, it also includes (female speaking) "sister's husband."

Mr. Thomas evidently does not realise the result of the noa relation, combined with pirrauru.

Now, when I turn to the Kurnai terms, and use the same diagram, I find this: 1 and 2 are members of an exogamous local group who married two women, 5 and 6, who belonged to one of the complementary local groups. Here we have the analogue of the Dieri noa relation transferred among the Kurnai from the extinct social organisation to the dominant local organisation.

Using bra-maian as a convenient term for husband and wife, the man 1 and the woman 5, and the man 2 and the woman 6 became bra-maian, and in consequence 1 became the breppa-bra of 6, and 2 of 5, according to the Kurnai terminology.

We have here just the relations created by the pirrauru marriage, but with this difference, that with the Kurnai 1 and 5, and 2 and 6 were husband and wife, while 1 and 6 and 2 and 5 were merely so nominally.

Of this I again say that the only satisfactory explanation, to me, is that, as I said before, "while in the Dieri tribe the terms of relationship denote actual facts, as regards pirrauru marriage, they are in the Kurnai tribe mere survivals in the terminology of relationships.

At page 305 Mr. Thomas says: "… Up to the present time Dr. Howitt has not even produced a pirrauru-practising tribe outside the Dieri nation."

I assume that Mr. Thomas quotes "Dieri nation" from Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's Northern Tribes of Central Australia, and I shall deal with this matter in that belief.

Higher up on the course of Cooper's Creek there is the Yantruwunta tribe, who, when I saw them in 1861-2,