no PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



absence. " When two brothers are married to two 

 sisters they commonly live together in a group- 

 marriage of four. When a man becomes a widower he 

 has his brother's wife as pirrauru^ making presents to 

 his brother " in return. A man will sometimes lend 

 his pirrauru to young men who have none with them 

 or to whom none have yet been allotted, receiving 

 in return presents of weapons trinkets and other 

 things, which he gives away to prominent men and 

 thus adds to his own importance. A visitor of the 

 proper exogamous moiety of the tribe and connubial 

 group (noa) is offered his host's tippa-malku wife as a 

 temporary pirrauru. Outside the relation of pirrauru 

 men have access also to unmarried girls and widows 

 of the group in which they have connubial rights. 

 Moreover, there are times when free intercourse takes 

 place between the sexes " without regard to existing 

 marriage relations. No jealous feeling is allowed to 

 be shown during this time under penalty of strangling," 

 though it may crop up afterwards. Such an occasion 

 would be a corrobboree at which the tribe meets 

 an adjacent tribe, as on the marriage of a member of the 

 one tribe with a member of the other tribe. 1 Women 

 too are always sent on embassies to neighbouring 

 tribes to settle disputes. If possible the women chosen 

 are such as belong to the tribe to which the embassy 

 is sent. They are accompanied by their pirraurus 

 as being more likely to be complaisant to their acts 

 than their tippa-malku husbands would be. For " it is 

 thoroughly understood that the women are to use 

 every influence in their power to obtain a successful 



1 Howitt, 175-185. Men sometimes exchange their tippa-malku 

 or their pirrauru wives. 



