562 



A girl who has had many intrigues is said to be lesa 

 desirable as a wife; at any rate, she could not be married by 

 betrothal (see below). 



If the boy wishes to marry (whether he has treated his 

 sweetheart as fiancee or as mistress) he makes his appearance 

 at her house one evening in a noisy and ostentatious manner. 

 He goes straight to the fireplace, and does not try to conceal 

 his presence or to keep quiet; good form, however, requires 

 that the girl's people should feign sleep. Next day the girl's 

 parents go to the house of the father of the boy and, accusing 

 him of intruding into their home, allude to marriage. As 

 the boy's behaviour is an indication of his willingness, there 

 is no difficulty in settling matters. 



Besides these settled relations between a girl and a boy 

 there seem to be at times general flirtations amongst a group 

 of boys and girls, but, so far as I am aware, they only talk, 

 though they possibly form preferences and arrange for meet- 

 ings ; no licence, however, is incidental to such gatherings. 

 In such cases some of the girls assemble in the house of one 

 of them, and the boys try to find it — a search in which they 

 do not, of course, meet with great difficulties. The elders, 

 in all probability, assemble in the upper thatched room while 

 the young people meet in the verandah. 



The only time when there seems to be any licence beyond 

 the Ui' id relationships is during the big annual feast (comp. 

 chap, v.); in fact the dancing, which takes place with in- 

 creased intensity during the few days of the feast, seems to 

 be associated with opportunities for short-lived intrigues, and 

 occasionally there even seem to be features of licentiousness, 

 groups absconding together; but on this point my inform- 

 ants do not agree. 



I have been told by Mr. Greenaway that the observation 

 by women of taboos before the feast is associated with the 

 idea of the preventative properties of those taboos. The young 

 girls and young married women, as well as the men, abstain 

 from drinking fresh water and eating boiled food, eating 

 only roast food and drinking the milk of roasted green coco- 

 nuts. They also drink and rinse their mouths with salt water. 

 This, I am told, is supposed to prevent conception, to which 

 accident the licence associated with the feasts is thought to 

 predispose. 



Thus the connection between cohabitation and conception 

 seems to be known among the Mailu, but to direct inquiries 

 as to to the cause of pregnancy I did not obtain emphatic 

 and positive answers. The natives — of this I am positive — 

 do not clearly grasp the idea of the connection between the 

 two facts, just as they do not grasp the connection between 



