Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/68

54 that which has probably been in action in Melanesia is the cross-cousin marriage, which has evidently been a widespread Melanesian institution. Its existence in Fiji is of course well known, and during last year I found it also in the Eastern Solomons, in the Torres Islands, and in the Southern New Hebrides. This form of marriage has usually been regarded as a survival of the dual organisation of society, but, after visiting Melanesia, I feel much less confident of this than I was before my visit, and I am now more inclined to believe that, though the two conditions are related to one another, one has not necessarily always preceded the other. Whatever may be the explanation of these institutions, there can be little doubt that the cross-cousin marriage might furnish the explanation of some of the functions of the father's sister, and especially her role in the arrangement of marriage. So far as I am aware, the only place where a special connection between a man and his father's sister has previously been pointed out is in India, and I have elsewhere tried to show the connection here with the cross-cousin marriage which was probably at one time a universal Dravidian institution. According to this view, the father's sister would arrange the marriage of her nephew, because at one time it would have been her daughter that he would have married; she would have been his potential, if not his actual, mother-in-law. Her other functions would be explained by her having been at one time the wife of the mother's brother, functions which had persisted and perhaps been magnified after the necessary connection between the two relationships had come to an end, as they certainly have come to an end in the Banks' Islands. A further piece of evidence as to the old identity of the two relationships is to be found in the fact that in at least one of the islands a man may marry his father's sister. In all the islands he may marry the wife of his mother's brother, which may even be said to