Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/244

Rh in the course of general conversation. I found that everyone in the Trobriands will, in the teeth of all the evidence, stoutly deny that similarity can exist between matrilineal kinsmen. A Trobriander is simply irritated and insulted if striking instances are pointed out to him, in exactly the same way as, in our own society, we irritate our next-door neighbour by bringing before him a glaring truth which contradicts some cherished opinion, political, religious, or moral, or which, still worse, runs counter to his personal interests.

The Trobrianders maintain that mention of such likenesses can only be made to insult a man. It is, in fact, a technical phrase in serious bad language to say migim lumuta, "Thy face thy sister's," which, by the way, is the worst combination of kinship similarity. This expression is considered quite as bad as "have intercourse with thy sister!" But, according to a Trobriander, no sane and decent man can possibly entertain in a sober dispassionate mood such an outrageous thought as that anyone should in the slightest degree resemble his sister (see ch. xiii, sec. 4).

Still more remarkable is the counterpart to this social dogma; namely, that every child resembles its father. Such similarity is always assumed and affirmed to exist. Where it is really found, even to a small degree, constant attention is drawn to it as to a thing which is nice, good and right. It was often pointed out to me how strongly one or other of the sons of To'uluwa, the chief of Omarakana, resembled his father, and the old man was especially proud of the more or less imaginary resemblance between Rh