MARITAL JEALOUSY 179 



are taken freely to public festivities ; they are prettily 

 dressed and well taken care of ; they have no need to 

 work ; and they find husbands at once when they have 

 given up living in the club. If such a girl becomes 

 pregnant she is married by the man whom she claims 

 as the father of her child. The married women never 

 enter a club-house. This avoidance is perhaps not 

 unconnected with the law by which a wife who com- 

 mits adultery may be sold to a club. On the other 

 hand, a husband is not reckoned adulterous though he 

 belong to a club and have intercourse with the girls 

 there. The idea of rape does not exist ; a married 

 woman who is raped is treated as an adulteress. 1 If 

 another and a probable account be correct the girls 

 kept in the/atu must in accordance with the laws of 

 exogamy belong to a different sept from the men of 

 the club. 2 



The Yakuts are very tolerant in sexual matters. 

 They " see nothing immoral in illicit love, provided 

 only that nobody suffers material loss by it. It is true 

 that parents will scold a daughter if her conduct 

 threatens to deprive them of their gain from the 

 bride-price ; but if once they have lost hope of marry- 



1 Senfft, Globus, xci. 141, 142, 149, 153. Reference may be 

 made to Prof. Frazer's discussion of the sexual relations of the 

 Pelew Islanders in general (Adonis, 435). He comes to the 

 conclusion that " a well-marked form of sexual communism limited 

 only by the exogamous prohibitions which attach to the clans 

 prevails." Compare with the falu the bachelors' houses of the 

 Boror6, supra, p. 108. 



2 Christian, 291. The same writer states that according to his 

 informant conjugal fidelity is not regarded as a virtue. Less 

 probable is his assertion, if I understand it correctly, that every girl 

 has to go through the falu, and that each man, married or un- 

 married, takes his turn with her, 



