Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/224

198 our girl is old enough, we will give her to him," mentioning a man who was popular with the people.

When the girl was old enough to be married, her father, accompanied by his brother, took her to her future husband's camp, and left her there with him.

A Wolgal man of the Malian class, in speaking to me of the practice of betrothal, said that a father could do what he liked with his daughter, because the child is his, and "he only gives it to his wife to take care of for him." This, which is at variance with the Dieri custom, where the mother has full disposal of her infant daughter, is an indication of an advance towards paternal descent.

If a betrothed girl eloped with some man, her father and brothers, but not her promised husband, went after her; and, if the escaping couple were overtaken, the girl was taken from him back to the camp, and then, having been severely beaten by her mother with a digging-stick, was handed over to her betrothed.

I heard among the Wolgal of a man and a girl who were far-away tribal brother and sister, and who ran away together. The tribes-people pursued them, and they, being overtaken, were both severely beaten, and the girl was then handed over to the man to whom she had been promised. In this tribe there was, in the case of elopements, not any practice such as the jus primae noctis of many other tribes; and my informants, two old men, expressed great disgust at the practice of the Kurnai in such cases, and also of their general practice of marriage by elopement, which one of them said was "very bad" and would not have been permitted in their tribe.

With the Ngarigo also there was the practice of betrothal in accordance with the Urabunna rule, and when the girl had reached the marriageable age her father took her to her husband's camp and handed her over to him.

In cases of marriage by elopement, there was a similar practice to that of the Kurnai by those who had been initiated at the same ceremonies as the eloper. But, after this occasion, no further access was allowed, nor were women in this tribe lent to friends or visitors.