MARITAL JEALOUSY m 



issue for their mission, and are therefore free of their 

 favours," subject always to their paramours being of the 

 proper connubial class. If the mission be successful, 

 " there is a time of licence between its members and 

 the tribe, or part of a tribe, to which it has been sent. 

 This is always the case ; and if the Dieri women failed 

 in it, it would be at peril of death on their return. 

 This licence is not regarded with any jealousy by the 

 women of the tribe to which the mission is sent. It is 

 taken as a matter of course. They know it, but do not 

 see it, as it occurs at a place apart from the camp." 

 Women of the latter tribe usually accompany the 

 embassy back to testify the approval of their tribe to 

 the agreement arrived at ; and though we are not 

 expressly told we may assume that the same licence 

 occurs in their case. 1 



It is clear that while jealousy exists among the 

 Dieri, it is very imperfectly developed. 2 The next 

 question is how these sexual complexities and licence 

 affect the children. The answer is: In no way to 

 their disadvantage. Their lineage is counted exclu- 

 sively through the mother. They belong to their 

 mother's totem and exogamous intermarrying class, 

 whoever is their father. They call all their mother's 

 husbands, whether tippa-malku or pirrauru, fathers ; 

 though on close inquiry they would distinguish the 

 former as their " real father" or "very father," calling 

 the others "little father." In like manner they call 

 the pirrauru wives of their mother's tippa-malku 



1 Howitt, 682. 



2 Jealousy, it is right to say, does attach to the pirrauru status; 

 but apparently not so much in reference to occasional acts as lest 

 further pirrauru relationships be entered into. And it is very far 

 jfrora being a specially masculine phenomenon (Howitt, 



