Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/435

 Reviews. 393

there were no tribal relatives until the classificatory system was set up by the inventors of exogamy. Clearly, when he propounds his suggestion of the origin of exogamy, — public ills caused by the marriage of near kin, — Dr. Frazer means the marriage of consanguineous people in our sense; for ex hypothesi there was nothing to distinguish the tribal relatives-to-be who were later to be forbidden to marry from those who were to be allowed to marry. Why, then, was the cumbrous machinery of exogamous classes introduced?

This raises the questions, what is in fact the effect of exogamy in a two-class tribe, and how far do Dr. Frazer's theories meet the case? The answer to the first question is that all tribes forbid brother and sister marriage ; some forbid the union of mother and son, and others that of father and daughter, according to whether they are matrilineal or patrilineal.

Now, if, as Dr. Frazer argues, it was consanguinity which made certain unions objectionable, it is inconceivable that the authors of exogamy should not have everywhere barred unions between mother and son, at a time when, according to Dr. Frazer's view, fatherhood was not recognised (p. 127), and the whole tribe cohabited promiscuously, so that it was impossible to name the father of a child. It is inexplicable that patrilineal descent should have appeared at all.

Clearly, what it was desired to prevent, if the fundamental view was everywhere the same, as Dr. Frazer maintains (p. 43), and if exogamy was due to legislation, was the union of brother and sister. But, even if the forbidden women included a man's mother, it would presumably be far easier to make a man carry his own family tree (cf. p. 113) in his head, than to teach him that the tribe was henceforth divided into exogamous moieties. The number of forbidden women would seldom exceed four, if present-day tribes are any guide ; and, as Dr. Frazer accepts the myth that the totem kins were endogamous, the possible field for each individual would be one or two women at a high estimate, perhaps none at all ; and it was to forbid these rare and easily preventable marriages that exogamy was called into existence !

Once more. Dr. Frazer argues that the totems were in some

2 c