Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/139

Rh pedigree includes the noblest family of the chieftains of Omarakana and the sub-clan Kwoynama of Osapola, both regarded as especially suitable for entering into matrimonial alliance.

Cross-cousin marriage is, undoubtedly, a compromise between the two ill-adjusted principles of mother-right and father-love; and this is its main raison d'être. The natives are not, of course, capable of a consistent theoretical statement; but in their arguments and formulated motives this explanation of the why and wherefore of the institution is implicit, in an unmistakable though piecemeal form. Several points of view are expressed and reasons given by them which throw some further light on their ideas, but all, if pushed to a conclusion, point to the same ultimate reason for cross-cousin marriage. Sometimes, for instance, it will be stated as a rider to the principle of exogamy that "the marriage between brother and sister is wrong" ("brother and sister" in the extended sense, all people of opposite sex and of the same generation related through the mother). "To marry a tabula (cross-cousin) is right; the true tabula (the first cross-cousin) is the proper wife for us."

Let us make clear one more point: among all the marriages possible between cousins, only one is lawful and desirable for the Trobriander. Two young people of opposite sex, whose mothers are sisters, are, of course, subject to the strict sexual taboo which obtains between brother and sister. A boy and a girl who are the children of two brothers stand in no special relation to each other. They may marry if they like, but there is no reason why Rh