Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/296

 256 Reviews.

names of relationships among the Australian blacks lend them- selves in support of this theory. He shows, in the first place, that the Australian does discriminate between his actual and his tribal relations ; secondly, that, on any theory of the social condition of articulate-speaking man, the terms of relationship cannot have connoted all the present duties and privileges which they now connote, and that these could arise only after the evolution of the tribe with its vast body of customary law ; and, thirdly, he urges that " as tribal law developed, regulating all things by grade of age, the old names for the nearest relations were simply extended (sometimes with qualifications, such as ' elder,' ' younger,' ' little ') to all persons of the same age-grade, in the same phratry, with the same duties, privileges, and restrictions." His " provisional conclusion is that the classi- ficatory widely inclusive terms of relationship prove nothing, either for or against the theory of primal promiscuity."

It is difficult to summarise a paper which is itself a summary of a very intricate subject. Mr. Lang himself admits that the weakness of the method lies in the philological examination of terms in imperfectly-known Australian languages, and in ex- plaining them in analogy with Aryan linguistic evolution. We are still far from having reached the stage when a comparative dictionary and grammar of the Australian dialects can be pre- pared. Speculations based on the imperfect material at present available must be accepted with much caution. W. Crooke.

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