174 The Classiflcatory System of 



man and his mother-in-law among the Australian Aborigines. 

 The terra used to express the fraternal relationship is 

 " Ngane," a word whose primary meaning is to shun, or 

 avoid ; and in Fiji, brother and sister shun one another with 

 all the anxious care shown by an Australian Aborigine to 

 avoid his mother-in-law. As soon as a boy arrives at the 

 hobbedehoy stage he is removed from his father's house to 

 the Mbure, or bachelors' hall, whereof there is one at least 

 in every village, the avowed object of this removal being 

 the separation of brother and sister. He may not eat with 

 his sister ; he may not touch her ; it is considered positively 

 indecent for him to address her; and he must not even 

 speak of her by the proper term of kinship. If he be 

 compelled to refer to her, he will not use the term Nganenggu, 

 my sister, but Tathinggu, my brother, or Wekanggu, one of 

 my kinsfolk. This sense of shame is not merely a hypocritical 

 putting on of false modesty. That it is thoroughly real, I 

 have fully convinced myself by repeated tests ; and I was 

 once not a little amused by the perplexity of one of our 

 missionaries, who, beino' ignorant of the taboo, and having 

 translated into Fijian the child's song, " 1 have a father in 

 the Promised land, &c.," was beyond measure puzzled by the 

 strange phenomenon which manifested itself when he was 

 teaching Fijian children to sing it. They got on very well 

 till they came to the verse "I have a brother in the promised 

 land," at the giving out whereof the boys lifted up their voices 

 and saDg lustily ; but the girls hung down their heads and 

 were silent. At the next verse " I have a sister, &c.," it was 

 the girls who sang, while the boys were voiceless ; and no 

 persuasion could induce boy or girl to sing the objectionable 

 line. What is the meaning of all this ? To me these facts 

 seem to point to a time when intercourse between brother 

 and sister, which had been commonly practised, was 

 forbidden by some authority powerful enough to enforce the 

 most stringent regulations to put down the practice ; for 

 surely for no other purpose could regulations so stringent be 

 recpired. Moreover, 1 conclude that this authority must 

 have been first exercised at some immeasurably remote 

 epoch, ages before the first prohibition of intercourse with a 

 brother's wife ; inasmuch as it is not looked upon like the 

 latter as a law whose evasion is excusable, but as a moral 

 obligation, to break which would be the most shameful 

 crime a man could possiby commit. 



The word for my sister's husband, a male speaking, is in 



