The marriage taboos are no less artificial, absurd, and fatal to free
choice and love. An Australian is not only forbidden to marry a girl
who is closely related to him by blood--sometimes the prohibition
extends to first, second, and even third cousins--but he must not
think of such a thing as marrying a woman having his family name or
belonging to certain tribes or clans--his own, his mother's or
grandmother's, his neighbor's, or one speaking his dialect, etc. The
result is more disastrous than one unfamiliar with Australian
relationships would imagine; for these relationships are so
complicated that to unravel them takes, in the words of Howitt (59),
"a patience compared with which that of Job is furious irritability."
These prohibitions are not to be trifled with. They extend even to war
captives. If a couple disregard them and elope, they are followed by
the indignant relatives in hot pursuit and, if taken, severely
punished, perhaps even put to death. (Howitt, 300, 66.) Of the
Kamilaroi the same writer says:
"Should a man persist in keeping a woman who is denied to
him by their laws, the penalty is that he should be driven
out from the society of his friends and quite ignored. If
that does not cure his fondness for the woman, his male
relatives follow him and kill him, as a disgrace to their
tribe, and the female relatives of the woman kill her for
the same reason."
It is a mystery to anthropologists how these marriage taboos, these
notions of real or fancied incest, could have ever arisen. Curr
(I.,236) remarks pointedly that
"most persons who have any practical knowledge of our
savages will, I think, bear me out when I assert that,
whatever their objections to consanguineous marriages may
be, they have no more idea of the advantages of this or that
sort of breeding, or of any laws of Nature bearing on the
question, than they have of differential calculus."[177]
Whatever may have been the origin of these prohibitions, it is obvious
that, as I have said, they acted as obstacles to love; and what is
more, in many cases they seem to have impeded legitimate marriage
only, without interfering with licentious indulgence. Roth (67) cites
O'Donnell to the effect that with the Kunandaburi tribe the _jus
primae noctis_ is allowed all the men present at the camp without
regard to class or kin. He also cites Beveridge, who had lived
twenty-three years in contact with the Riverina tribes and who assured
him that, apart from marrying, there was no restriction on
intercourse. In his book on South Australia J.D. Wood says (403):
"The fact that marriage does not take place between
members of the same tribe, or is forbidden amongst
them, does not at all include the idea that chastity is
observed within the same limits."
Brough Smyth (II., 92) refers to the fact that secret violations of
the rule against fornication within the forbidden classes were not
punished. Bonwick (62) cites the Rev. C. Wilhelmi on the Port Lincoln
customs:
"There are no instances of two Karraris or two Matteris
having been married together; and yet connections of a
less virtuous character, which take place between
members of the same caste, do not appear to be
considered incestuous."
Similar testimony is adduced by Waitz-Gerland (VI., 776), and others.