Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/260

234 on the last evening, the assemblage disperses, spreading out like a fan from the ceremonial ground, and it is then that the young men, of both sides of the community, lie in wait in the darkness to capture women, by rushing out and carrying them off as they return to their camps. This has to be done quietly, otherwise the girls' friends will return and rescue them. If the attackers feel themselves sufficiently strong in numbers, they defend their captures; if not, they let them go, and escape for their lives, sometimes receiving very ugly wounds. The women captured may be either married or single, but a preference is always given to the latter, and husbands with any regard for their wives always keep a good look-out on them at this time, for otherwise it is more than probable that they would be missing. A young man "from information received" gets the right girl. He also asks when he has seized her of what class she is, and if not suitable, immediately lets her go. His object is to get a wife of the right class. When these tribelets meet, there is always some one who knows, and can tell everything about the other classes, sub-classes, or totems, as well as his own.

When a man marries a woman from a distant locality, he goes with her tribelet, and identifies himself with her people, and this is a rule with very few exceptions. He becomes part of her family and kindred. In the event of a ceremonial combat occurring, between the tribe of the woman and that of her husband, the latter acts as a blood relation of her people, and will fight with, and even if possible kill, his own relations of his former tribe. A father and his son have been seen fighting under such circumstances, and the son would have killed his father, if he had not been prevented.

Fighting being a pastime with them, a few blows or a deep cut or two are considered as nothing, and the men being in first-rate physical condition, the wounds soon heal.

A man travelling from a distance, who can speak the language of the people in a place at which he arrives, and thus make himself known to them, will be hospitably treated. People meeting him and who do not know him will ask him. who he is. He says, for instance, "I am Bunda; the