Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/151

Rh having obtained the Oxford diploma in anthropology, determined to do some field-work, and was appointed a Research Student by the Committee of Anthropology. Aided by contributions from the University and from several colleges and some private friends, he set out for the Northern D'Entrecasteaux Islands, where his brother-in-law, the Rev. A. Ballantyne, had been working as a missionary for several years, and the knowledge and standing with the natives thus gained provided a footing for Mr. Jenness' work. To Mr. Ballantyne's zealous and enthusiastic help this record of the condition of the natives owes very much; Mr. Jenness modestly says that "any merit that may be found in it is due almost entirely to Ballantyne," who unfortunately died of blackwater fever in 1915 after the former had left the islands. The volume deals only with two islands, namely, Goodenough, where Mr. Ballantyne's station was, and the neighbouring island of Fergusson, with which he was also well acquainted.

And a very interesting and valuable record it is. On Goodenough (to which only the details apply, but the opposite island of Fergusson is presumably similar in most respects) the unit of society is the family, consisting of husband and wife with their descendants. Beyond these it is organized, not in tribes or clans, but in hamlets. The hamlet is inhabited by families closely connected with one another by ties of kinship; and an immigrant family settling in a hamlet hastens to connect itself by marriage with the other families as soon as possible. There is no restriction limiting the hamlets from which a man may take a wife, but usually he does so from adjacent hamlets within the same district. The effect is to unite the families of the hamlets within a given district in close bonds of common interest and relationship. Thus the organization is not far removed from a tribal organization of society, in which it probably originated. The authors have apparently not investigated the history, as, for instance, has Dr. Rivers; they content themselves with depicting society, as it now is.

The headman of a hamlet is the recognized head of the families inhabiting it; but he has no power beyond the influence which a man of experience and reputation commands every-