Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/202

 1 86 The Origin of Exogamy and Totemisni.

phratry, the Niipa or Nca set. Men, reflecting on the system, saw that it barred the marriage of persons of close consanguinity, and thought that other persons, also con- sanguine but not so closely consanguine, should be excluded ; hence the four and eight class systems.

In the same way the Catholic Church excluded first cousins, and relations in "gossipred," — godfathers and god- mothers, godsons and goddaughters, — from intermarriage, and introduced other restrictions hitherto unknown. In Scotland, among the noblesse, it became very difficult for any marriage to occur without, a dispensation, and man\' pairs were divorced because of some s'carcely traceable relationship. The Australian blacks, in precisely the same way, conceived new scruples, and passed more stringent regulations, till human nature revolted, and the exogamous system was abandoned among the Kurnai and the Narran-ga. They had run the whole round of the laby- rinth and come out into davlieht.