228 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



saying : " Poor fellow ! He is a widower and has a 

 long way to go, and will feel very lonely." 1 The 

 Yerkla-mining rarely lend women, " excepting to 

 visitors, but it is occasionally done for a friend who 

 has no wife ; but in all cases only to one who is of the 

 proper class-name [that is, to whom the woman might 

 legally have been married]. The most frequent case 

 is when one of the Headmen (medicine-men) requests 

 a loan for some friendly visitor/' 2 Among the 

 Narrang-ga tribes of Yorke Peninsula, "when the 

 local totem-clans met at some tribal ceremony brothers 

 exchanged wives for a time, but did not lend them to 

 strangers." 3 The Yuin lent their wives to guests. A 

 man who had more wives than he had an immediate 

 use for would sometimes give one away to a poor 

 fellow who had none. 4 This was a thoroughly 

 businesslike arrangement : he reduced the number 

 of mouths he had to hunt for and at the same time 

 secured the attachment of the woman's new husband. 

 Lastly, among the Yaitmathang a youth after passing 

 through the puberty ceremonies might choose any 

 woman of the tribe, his own blood-relations excepted, 

 for the night. 5 In this case, as among the Narrinyeri, 

 it would seem that the class-restrictions on mating 

 were disregarded as well as the rights of husbands. 

 It is obvious that among the Blackfellows the laxity of 

 sexual relations was in no way affected by the change 

 of reckoning from maternal to paternal descent. 



i Howitt, 276, 266. 2 id. 258. 



3 Id. 260. The term brothers must be understood in the wider 

 sense according to native reckoning. 



4 Id. 266. On the universality of the practice of lending a wife 

 to a guest cf. Brough Smyth, ii. 301 ; as to the licence at corrob- 

 borees and on other occasions, Id. 319. 5 Howitt, 566. 



