Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/146

134 the son-in-law, so that in this case, the widow, who was a second wife (and not the man's mother-in-law), would have ranked in social precedence above the daughter already married. The "recalcitrant and ungallant" son-in-law doubtless realised with Sir James Frazer that marriage with the daughter involved marriage with the daughter's mother in order to secure the enjoyment of the estate. But the tale is not quite clear. It does not say definitely that the mother of the girl he had married was still alive and available. This may have been, and probably was not, the case, since the man refused to marry a second wife, having married the daughter of the senior wife. It is not very probable that he would have refused had he not believed that he had good grounds for refusing to marry the second widow. But what the statement in the Census Report does prove is that in the case cited marriage with the daughter was a consequence, not a cause, of the marriage with the widow.

Further reference to Major Playfair's account shows that we have three definite marriage schemes in vogue among the Garos, each of which turns on marriage with the widow. In the first, the cross-cousin marriage, there is a male cousin available, and he has to marry the daughter of his father's sister, ultimately marrying the widow, often therefore his own aunt, as is noted in the Assam Census Report. Then there is the institution known as the nokrom marriage. By this, when no cousin is available, a man of her father's group is chosen and marries the daughter, with the ultimate liability of the mother-in-law. Finally, when there is no nokrom available for a widow to marry, "she is governed by the law of akim, which lays down that a widow or widower may not marry again without the permission of the family of the deceased husband or wife, and then only into their respective motherhoods.... The law is especially hard on the women. They are the owners of all property, and the relations of a deceased husband will often keep his widow waiting for years for a mere child. By the time the child is of marriageable age the woman is already old. In such a case the young husband is always allowed to marry a young girl as well, so the widow is kept unmarried for