Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/145

Rh them, and they tread the strait path of superficial decorum only under heavy pressure. The boy knows what he has to lose, so he is as careful as he can bring himself to be. Also, the father controls his son to some extent, and at the same time exercises some authority over his future daughter-in-law, through his status of maternal uncle. A man who had betrothed his son and niece to each other put the matter thus to me: "She is afraid that she might die (that is, by sorcery), or that I might hit her." And, of course, her mother is very careful and does what she can to conceal and make light of her daughter's delinquencies.

In spite of this, friction is common and ruptures not unknown. One of my earliest informants was Gomaya of Sinaketa, an enterprising, but very lazy and dishonest man, and a great coureur de femmes, I got his story partly from himself, partly from gossip, and partly by personal observation. He was betrothed to his cross-cousin, but in spite of this, entered into a flagrant intrigue with a good-looking girl, one Ilamweria of Wakayse, a village near Omarakana (see ch. vii, sec. 4). Once, when he brought this girl to Sinaketa, the kinsmen of his fiancée wanted to kill her and she had to run away. When Gomaya grew tired of his amour and went back to his native village, he wished to sleep with his betrothed, but she refused. "You always sleep with Ilamweria," she said, "so go to her." He at once applied to a man acquainted with love magic and asked for a spell, saying: "I want to sleep with my wife (that is, my fiancée); she refuses me. I must make some magic over her." And Rh