76 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS PSYCHOLOGY 



While &quot;married people see in it nothing to be ashamed of, the 

 young and unmarried are forbidden by modesty to take part.&quot; 

 (19:78.) Dalager states that this performance is of very rare 

 occurrence and adds that &quot;a married woman who has duly 

 become a mother of a family never takes part in it.&quot; (Quoted 

 43:168.) A similar &quot;lamp-extinguishing game&quot; is found in 

 East Greenland; it is played in the winter when the people 

 live in the large communal houses.&quot; A good host always has 

 the lamps put out at night when there are guests in the house. 

 In this game, unlike the one described by Egede, unmarried 

 people also take part. But, according to Holm, the same limi 

 tations as to kinship are in force as with regard to contracting 

 marriage. (30:98.) One man claimed he did not participate 

 in this game, for if he did, he would have to reciprocate when 

 he had guests, and he did not like to have other men have 

 intercourse with his wife. The neighbors denied this story. 

 It may have been a fabrication with the purpose of appearing 

 righteous in the eyes of the Europeans according to their stand 

 ards. (30:99.) 



Murdoch reports that, among some Eskimo on Repulse Bay, 

 there is said to be, at certain times, &quot;a general exchange of 

 wives throughout the village, each woman passing from man 

 to man till she has been through the hands of all, and finally 

 returns to her husband.&quot; He gives as his informants &quot;some 

 of the whalemen who winter in the neighborhood.&quot; The char 

 acter both of the story and the tellers make us look with sus 

 picion, or at least caution, on such a statement. 



In passing, we may refer to Murdoch s opinion that these 

 wife-exchanging customs &quot;seem to indicate that the Eskimo 

 have not wholly emerged from the state called communal mar 

 riage, in which each woman is considered as the wife of every 

 man in the community.&quot; Since Westermarck published his 

 epoch-making argument against the theory of primitive promis 

 cuity, we are not so inclined to this interpretation, which, it 

 should be said, was a prevailing doctrine when Murdoch wrote 

 the above. 



We have noted that one of the principal causes of polygamy 

 and divorce is desire for offspring. This appears to be a 

 prominent motive in exchanging and lending of wives also. 

 True to life is a tale in which the wives of two housemates 

 could not get children. Therefore, they exchanged wives for 



