Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/533

 A Recent Tivin-Miwdcr in S. Africa 223

does Banyatsan mean by saying that " my mother came to jetch the other child?'' Were they proposing to kill one and save the other ? That is known to be a stage in twin-cult in some communities. The tribal authority comes out, not only in the action of the headman's wife but in the admission that the other women had the right to dispose of the children. That twin-murder was still the custom appears from the naive con- fession of the man, on the quest for justification, that there are no twins in our stadt, and that he had never seen a twin-murder. He knows, however, that it is women's business : so he could not see it ; and the absence of twins in our town is suggestive.

Dr. Hartland rightly points out that the woman Gabalene ought to have been on trial, as she clearly occupied a leading part in the murder and took the initiative. The Court came to a correct judgment as to the innocence of the twin-mother ; and the Commissioner was clearly right in granting a com- mutation of the sentence. As we have said, it must be very difficult to judge cases where the ethical principles of action are in such various degrees of evolution ; one wonders what would happen if we were arraigned before a court of justice of the year 5921 a.d.

It should be noted that this interesting case furnishes no support to those who lightly explained the custom of twin- murder, when attention was first drawn to it, by saying that it was meant to relieve the mother of the burden of two children, or else that it was a case parallel to that of the dog-fancier who said, " that is the one which I should keep." These are the primitive jests which greeted the emergency of didymology. There is no evidence that selection of the offspring or relief of the mother is thought of : but there is abundant evidence of the survival of an aboriginal fear into our own day; and this fear can be shown to have affected our own civilisation and our own religion, and not merely to be a Bantu or African custom.

J. Rendel Harris.