Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/290

264 have been common among the Yuin, but not so frequent as marriage by the exchange of sisters. On such an elopement a man would start well armed for fear of consequences.

The following occurrence was discussed by some of the Yuin old men in my presence. A Kangaroo man ran off with a Brown-snake girl who had been promised to another man. So soon as it was discovered, all the men there—Kangaroo, Brown-snake, and other totems—followed them. The runaways were caught, and the girl's father and brothers, and her mother's brother, fought with him, and the girl was beaten by her kindred. Subsequently her mother and sisters attacked her with their digging-sticks, against whom she defended herself as well as she could, until she was knocked down.

Such a fight takes place sometimes on the return of the eloping couple to the camp. The offender is armed with a shield and club, and the aggrieved kindred with shield, club, and boomerang. They fight man to man, and man after man, until the offender has been knocked down four times, or he has knocked down all his antagonists, one after the other. In either case he is free from further feud; but probably he would not be allowed to retain the girl unless he had been so fortunate or so skilful as to have knocked down all her men. Even then, he would have to find a sister to exchange. The girl, when caught, became for the time common to all the men who pursued her, that is, who might have lawfully become her husband. If in such a case a man who was too nearly related to her, or who was of some locality with which those of hers did not intermarry, or who was of the same totem name, attempted to exercise this right, then he would be compelled to fight with all her male relatives at the same time. One of the old Murring, in speaking of these matters in the old days, said, "If a man were to run away with a woman who was one of his sisters, all the men would pursue him, and if he were caught, and did not give her up at once, all his own relatives would be against him. If he still refused to give her up, the Gommera of his place would probably say to his men, "This man has done very wrong, you must kill him," and