Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/199

 The Origin of Exogamy and Toteviism. 183

uniting'' the totem-kins instantly "adopted" the four or eight class system. The tribes of one totem to one totem marriage : the Dieri, without that rule : the To-tathi, Bar- kinji, and many other tribes, have not the four class or eight class system, but all agree that tribes began with the two class or phratry model. Many tribes adhere to it; others have gone on to the four ; others (all with male descent) to the eight class system. Their motive and method, I think, are obvious. They do not know Jioiu the phratry, or two class system, arose, but they see that it excludes from marriage some close consanguines, mother and son, brother and sister. They suppose that the system was made for this very purpose, and when they wanted to exclude other consanguines, whom the system did not exclude, they did so in the honoured ancestral model, by repeated bisections, making first two, then four "subclasses" in each phratry.

Mr. Frazer goes on : — " We can imagine that each com- munity in the confederacy should continue as before to take its wives from another community," ("community" apparently now means phratry), " but why should the two intermarrying communities nowcede their child to athird?" (The third "community " clearly means " subclass.") Mr. Frazer knows, and has very well explained, why the children are "ceded to athird community," that is, enter the subclass in the brother or mother's [sister's ?] phratry, which is not that of father or mother (vol. i., p. 163). It "is to prevent the marriage of parents with children." The child is not driven into an alien "community"; it is still in the totem- kin and phratry of its father and mother, but the rule"maks siccar" there can be no union of child with father or mother without violating an express law.

The same obvious reply answers this objection : " On the theory of amalgamation what motive can be assigned for the rigid exclusion of all children from the communities of both parents .'' " There was no such exclusion, no sub- classes existed, when the amalgamation was made ; there