Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/352

 324 though an offence, is a comparatively venial one. In their ceremonies the youth "is told to conduct himself discreetly towards women, to restrict himself to the class which his name confines him to, and not to look after another's gin; that if he does take another gin when young who belongs to another, he is to give her up without any fighting; not to take advantage of a gin if he finds her alone."

While referring to the form in which the precept is communicated, I may mention that the tribes of southern New South Wales (the Murring, Wiraijuri, Kamilaroi, and others) present their moral lessons during the initiation ceremonies "in pantomimic dances," the old men threatening the youths: "If you do anything like that when you go back you will be killed"—that is, says Mr. Howitt, "either by magic or by violence:" apparently not by divine interference. The pantomimic dances corresponding to the precept we are considering are grossly obscene, though, as Mr. Lang reminds us (p. 194), "divinely sanctioned." We have already taken the moral measure of Daramulun, the game-legged, and by no means eternal, "Creator and Judge," in whose name they are performed.

Even where, as among the Kurnai, the elders are comparatively unselfish in the matter of wives, the difficulties and suspicions attaching to an unmarried man are such as to render life a burden to himself and to the elders, who, even if they have not wives or daughters of their own to watch, are always anxious lest he provoke a quarrel within the camp, or a war with a neighbouring tribe. If he have a kinswoman—a sister, say, or a daughter—to exchange for a bride, the affair is often susceptible of arrangement. If not, his only alternative, as a rule, is an elopement. A necessary preliminary to elopement is the capture and forcible violation of the bride on the part of four confederate