Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/197

 The Origin of Exogamy and Totonisiu. 1 8 1

could not intermarry with each other. Now it was their old sacred rule to intermarry with each other, though at one time they could, if a young brave wanted an adventure, seek a bride from an uncovenanted group. If I am right "the Devil's riddle is mastered," the puzzle of " why only tivo phratries " is solved. I was always inclined to think that it was an automatic result of some arrangement, but I could not find the arrangement, and had to fall back on design. This theory accounts for the final coalescence into a tribe of groups, by my assumption originally hostile.

Perhaps the usage of part of New Ireland, and of two adjacent groups of isles, Tanga and Aneri, may corroborate our information concerning the one totem to one totem marriage of the Urabunna, Itchumundi, and Karamundi " nations." The " totemic creatures are the sea-eagle, the dove, the black and white fly-catcher, two kinds of parrots, the sea-gull, the dog, and the pig. No man may marry a woman of his own totem, and more than that, the men of any one totem clan are not free to marry the women of any other totem clan. The Sea-gull men always marry Sea-eagle women," as Urabunna Dingo men only marry Water Hen women. " The Parrot men of one clan (the am pirik) may only marry Parrot women of the other clan, (the angkika) or Dove w^omen."-^'^ But to other clans a larger choice is open. Pig men may marry women of any other totem except Sea-eagle, Dog men may marry into any totem but their own.

This looks as if some totem-kins in these isles had clung to, and others had relaxed, the Urabunna rule, — one totem to one totem.

My theory (as far as convergence or amalgamation of totem-kins into phratries, exogamous and intermarrying, is concerned), also occurred to M. Arnold van Gennep. Un- luckily he suppressed his chapter on the subject in his Mythes et Legendes d'Australie, as my views had already appeared.^^ •50 ToUmism and Exogamy, vol. ii. 32-3. "^ Op. cit. (1906), p. cxii., note 5.