Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/437

 Revietvs. 395

their traditions as to their migration are historically accurate; primd facie, therefore, so is their account of the origin of their system of exogamy. If that is so, exogamy is of more than one kind, for there is no question here of exogamous classes being evolved by lawgivers as a refuge from promiscuity.

This brings me to another point on which Nigerian facts are against Dr. Frazer. We are told (p. 135) that the system of kin- ship of totemic peoples is always classificatory ; the Edo (Bini) are totemistic ; but their kinship system is descriptive ; my father's brother is called my father's father's son, and so on.

On certain points Dr. Frazer seems to go astray entirely. There is a strange statement (i. p. 248) that "segregating of the two moieties locally from one another (in Australia) was to secure that the men and women who were forbidden to each other should not normally meet." What the author has in view I cannot conceive ; for the fact is that, if men of one moiety marry women of the other, segregation up to the time of the marriage keeps apart those who should marry and keeps together those who should not marry.

A note (p. 244) on the change from the maternal to the paternal line contains another curious statement. Dr. Frazer supposes that wives were purchased in order that their children might be the heirs of the husband ; that is correct ; but he goes on to say that the rule of inheritance would be changed " by compensating those who under a system of mother kin would have been the rightful heirs." But the bride price is paid to the woman's family, and a man's heirs under mother kin are his sister's children ; are the sister's children compensated if their mother's brother purchases a wife ?

A minor slip, which should, however, be noted, is the identifi- cation (iii. p. 403) of the Musquakie, who are Algonquins, with the Muscogee or Creek Indians.

It will readily be imagined that this brief review does not exhaust all points of interest in Dr. Frazer's great work; an adequate discussion, even of the problems, would demand a whole number of Folk- Lore, and even then the collection of material would remain untouched. One is accustomed to get so much from Dr. Frazer that, when he glides lightly over points of