Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/436

 394 Reviews.

cases hereditary before exogamy arose, — and this is, indeed, the most probable explanation of how totem kins are ranged on one side or the other, — but we may ask why create moieties at all, when in matrilineal tribes all consanguineous marriages would be equally well barred by totemic exogamy ? Dr. Frazer speaks of the burdensome rule of the class ; and the burden was laid on their shoulders unnecessarily. Is it probable that this should have been done all over the world?

Is it probable that all the world should have agreed to arrange hereditary kins on one side or the other, if, as Dr. Frazer suggests (p. 128), this arrangement is only accidental?

Dr. Frazer has failed to deal with evidence that goes against his views. Firstly, it is recorded that in the Urabunna tribe the exogamous law takes the form of a decree that members of one totem kin shall be restricted in their choice to one single totem kin in the other class. As a tribe which practises what Dr, Frazer regards as group marriage, (though reasons, which lie does not combat, have been urged against this view), the Urabunna are, in our author's view, one of the primitive tribes of the centre. How does it come that with them the class counts for nothing and the kin for everything in exogamy? Why was the class called into existence? Secondly, from the time of Ridley onwards so-called irregular marriages have been reported from Australia, i.e. marriages in which a man goes outside his proper sub-class or even class. Dr. Frazer absolutely ignores these, except in his account of the tribe, but it is far from being an isolated phe- nomenon, and must be reckoned with in propounding a theory dealing with Australian matrimonial institutions.

On certain points Dr. Frazer's assertions are too absolute, and a negative can either be proved or made probable.

Dr. Frazer affirms his belief that exogamy everywhere arose in the same way. On this point some Nigerian evidence is of interest. The people of the VVefa country are divided into two great exogamous groups, Ego and Atzikia; traditionally tliese arose when Sobo immigrants took possession of the country, and they were formed as a result of the ordinary marriage rule that a man may not marry in his father's family. (I hope to set out the matter at length shortly.) Now I have reason to believe that