Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/542

 5 1 8 Reviews.

conclusion to which he has come, and which was foreshadowed in his previous volume on the Baronga. According to his researches the taboo between the relations-in-law is entirely caused by this custom. It is not due to any fear of incest, to any remnant of a practice of wife-capture, or to any other of the causes variously conjectured by students of primitive institutions, but simply and solely to the irritation arising from the non-payment of the bride- price or from the continual dread of divorce and consequent repayment. This is a conclusion M. Junod has thought out and buttressed with reasons requiring respectful consideration. In its favour is (among others) the important fact that the person between whom and the husband is the most stringent taboo of all is the wife's brother's wife, whose bride-price has been paid by means of the oxen given by the husband for his own wife. Next to her, however, and indeed more important than she among the northern clans, is the wife's mother : and for their stringent taboo between her and her son-in-law M. Junod's theory does not seem to account. It is possible that the lobolo paid by the son- in-law may have been applied in liquidation of the arrears of his father- in-law's debt for the bride's mother. This, no doubt, happens sometimes, but will it apply in the majority of cases ? It is curious also that the taboo between a man and his wife's father (to whom, in the first instance, the lobolo is due) is so much less and ceases so soon. There is another point in favour of the explanation that the taboo is due to fear of incest, namely, that the daughters of the wife's brother's wife are potential wives for the husband who has paid or owes the lobolo^ M. Junod himself seems to have a lingering suspicion that here, after all, may be the true reason. " Perhaps," he says, " at the very bottom of the Thonga soul there exists the strong feeling that it is altogether bad to marry a woman and her daughter. I fear my mother-in- law because I married her daughter. I fear my great nmkonivana [the wife's brother's wife] because her daughters are my potential wives." It may be added, (though it is by no means a con- vincing argument), that this is the reason alleged by the natives

'If it be desired that a man and his wife's brother's wife shall intermarry, the taboo-relationship between them can, however, be " Icilled " by a special ceremonv.