Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/59

Rh name, but, if others are present, the aunt would be very angry. In this island the father's sister and the mother are called by the same kinship-term, but strangely enough there is a special term for the husband of the father's sister, who is called hurina. There are no restrictions on conduct between a man and his hurina, who are on quite familiar terms, though there is no such especially derisive behaviour as in Mota.

A much more complete account of the functions of the father's sister was obtained from the Banks' Islands, where of all relatives the father's sister is the most highly honoured. The term by means of which her relationship is ordinarily denoted is veve (mother) or veve vus rawe (the mother who kills or strikes the tusked pig, or "is connected with striking the pig"), but she may also be called maranaga, a term used for a woman of high rank and now used for "queen." The father's sister must never be addressed or spoken of by her personal name, but by one of these terms denoting either her relationship or the estimation in which she is held by the speaker. It is a sign of the times that children will now annoy their aunts by calling them by name, and I was told of one case in which a woman had been reduced to tears by this unceremonious behaviour on the part of her nephews and nieces, behaviour which in the old days would have been out of the question. A man will never chaff (poroporo) his aunt, or joke with her, and will always speak to her in a gentle and conciliatory tone. A definite comparison was made between the mother and the father's sister in this respect; the mother may be spoken to strongly, emphatically, with assurance, but such a mode of address would never be employed in speaking to the father's sister, and in the small island of Rowa it was said