Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/207

Rh Love or affection {yobwayli) has its seat in the intestines, in the skin of the belly, and of the arms, and only to a lesser extent in those springs of desire, the eyes. Hence, we like to look at those of whom we are fond, such as our children, our friends, or our parents, but when this love is strong we want to hug them.

Menstruation the Trobrianders regard as a phenomenon connected with pregnancy in a vague manner: "the flow comes, it trickles, it trickles, it ebbs—it is over." They denote it simply by the word blood, buyavi, but with a characteristic grammatical peculiarity. While ordinary bodily blood is always mentioned with the pronoun of nearest possession, which is affixed to all the parts of a human body, menstruous blood is spoken of with the same possessive pronouns as are used for ornamentation and articles of apparel (second nearest possession). Thus buyavigu, "blood-mine" ("part of me—blood"), means bodily blood coming from a cut or haemorrhage; agu buyavi, "my blood" ("belonging to me—blood"), means menstruous blood.

There is no pronounced masculine dislike or dread of menstruous blood. A man will not cohabit with his wife or sweetheart during her monthly period, but he will remain in the same hut and participate in the same food, and only refrains from sleeping in the same bed. Women, during menstruation, wash themselves daily, for purposes of cleanliness, in the same large water hole from which the whole village draws its drinking water, and in which, also, males occasionally take a bath. There are no special ablutions ceremonially carried out at the end of the Rh