MARITAL JEALOUSY 173 



betide her if she was guilty of light conduct." A man 

 who had many wives however would lend one of 

 them to a guest whom he loved to honour not his first 

 or chief wife but one of the inferior wives. He could 

 also let a guest have one of the unmarried girls. 1 

 Divorce is common. The husband puts away the 

 wife, or the wife returns to her relatives. If the 

 husband in the latter case take no step to persuade or 

 compel her by force to return (which he sometimes 

 does) the divorce is final and both parties can marry 

 again. Husbands are as a rule less jealous than wives : 

 probably the result of the polygyny practised by many 

 who can afford it. 2 



It may be conjectured that the length to which the 

 practice of taboo was driven in New Zealand may 

 account for the chastity of married women, mitigated 

 though it was by the commonness of divorce. A man 

 on taking a wife by that act tabooed her to himself. She 

 was guarded from others by, and subjected so far as 

 her own acts were concerned to, the awful and 

 mysterious penalties of tapu. In this condition she 

 remained so long as she remained a wife. Hence, 

 though while still noa, or common, she did not hesi- 

 tate to indulge her desires, once made tapu she would 

 fear to suffer invasion even by force of her husband's 

 property in her ; and the same fear and not merely the 

 fear of material vengeance would restrain other men 

 from either tempting or compelling her. 



Some such explanation at least is necessary to 



1 E. Tregear,/.y4./. xix. 101, 103, 102; cf. Polack,i. 137, 145 ; 

 Taylor, New Zealand, 167. See a mythological story of fraternal 

 polyandry, Grey, Polyn. Myth. 81. 



2 Polack, i, 159, 146. 



