Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/283

V daughter's husband, nor his brother. If she did so, it was thought that her hair would turn white. In order to prevent such consequences, a woman would, when the son-in-law sent game by his wife to her husband, rub charcoal over her face, especially over her mouth, and she could then safely eat of the game without suffering any harm. A widow went to the brother of her deceased husband; if there were no brother, then her father or her brother disposed of her.

The Bunurong at Anderson's Inlet intermarried with the Jato-wara-wara division of the Brataua clan of the Kurnai, but I have no knowledge how such marriages were arranged. The Bunurong were Bunjil, the Kurnai had no class names, but both had the regulation requiring marriages to be formed only between people of certain localities. Possibly it was on this basis that the inter-tribal marriages were arranged.

As to the tribes along the Murray River, which had the classes Bunjil and Waang, I know that they intermarried with the Kulin tribes, and that their marriage regulations were analogous to those of the Wurunjerri and Thagun-worung, with descent in the male line. The Bangerang, who lived about the junction of the Goulburn and Murray Rivers, are an instance with them. Not only was it forbidden to the children of a brother on the one side, and a sister on the other, to marry, but their descendants, as far as they could be reckoned, were equally debarred. It was held that they were "too near," and only a little removed from "brother and sister."

The Yerkla- mining do not intermarry in a friendly manner with the adjoining tribes; but this does not refer to the western division of the tribe at Eyre's Sandpatch. Girls are promised when quite children, and may be claimed at any time. It is the father who gives his daughter, but he may be overruled by his elder brother, especially if the latter has the support of the principal, that is, the oldest