Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/348

 312 Australian Marriage Customs.

As I stated, the iigaperi is the primary husband of the woman, but not necessarily the progenitor of the boy who applies to him the term ngaperi ; ngaperi-waka is applied by a boy to all the men who are noa to his mother ; some of them are, some are not pirraurii to her, but all are equally ngaperi-waka to him ; if one of the pirrauru is his father, this man is ngaperi-waka {little father) just as much as a man who never has relations with his mother. It is therefore absolutely clear that these two terms, ngaperi and ngaperi-waka, refer to status in the tribe and in the family and not to paternity, for, as anyone can see, the distinction between " father " and " little father " takes no account of paternity.

The Kurnai terms niimgan and breppa-mtmgan are, so far as we know, used just as the Dieri terms just discussed; and if Dr. Howitt had asserted no more, there would have been nothing to criticise in his remarks. What he actually asserted, however, was that the breppa-mungan { — ngaperi- waka) of the Kurnai corresponds to the pirranru spouse of the Dieri. In reply to this it is sufficient to say that all ngaperi-waka are not pirrauru, as they should be if Dr. Howitt's assertion were not entirely misleading.

Dr. Howitt has, in fact, no reply to make to my charge that he is guilty of a grave confusion in his statement of the case. His case depends on the assumption that the breppa-ninugan of the Kurnai is the pirrajcru husband of the Dieri, only in the former case the actual rights are obsolete. But the Kurnai have no institution and no terms corresponding to pirrauru ; their terms actually correspond, as I show below, save only that they are post-matrimonial, to noa.

In connection with marital terms. Dr. Howitt makes an important concession (p. 179) in reply to my criticism on one point. He admits that the term used by the Arunta to denote the husband of a boy's mother does