ON THE ORGANISATION OF AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 119 
Marriage by elopement occurs so frequently, that although it is always regarded 
as a breach of the law and custom, yet, as it is under certain circumstances a valid 
union, it may be considered a recognised form of marriage. 
A few instances will suffice, and, for convenience, I will here also notice the 
manner in which this offence is punished, not only in cases in which, had consent been 
obtained, the parties might have been married, but also in those cases in which there 
could not have been any lawful union, by reason of the woman having been betrothed 
to some other man, having been already married, or being of too near kin. 
As I have stated elsewhere more than once, this practice reached its greatest 
extent in the Kurnai tribe. An old man of the Wolgal tribe in New South Wales, 
who had long known the Kurnai, spoke with contempt of this practice, not of 
elopement per se as an occasional event, but of the Kurnai elopement as a form of 
marriage. 
I have little to add to that which I have said elsewhere as to the prevalence of 
this form of marriage and its punishment in this tribe,* which was aided by a special 
kind of wizard in this tribe, the Buujil Yenjin, whose office it was to cause elopement 
by his magical songs. 
It seems that the Kuraai have drifted necessarily into this form of marriage as 
the only one open to them, excepting in the small minority of cases. Their system ot 
relationship is of the most archaic form, recognising, for instance, among kindred 
persons of the same level in a generation, only brothers and sisters, and none of those 
analogous relationships which we call cousins. The children of brothers, own and 
tribal, are in the fraternal relation to all eternity. So also are the children of sisters. 
Marriage being strictly prohibited between all those in the fraternal relation, and the 
choice of a wife being restricted by the local rules to a few local divisions of a tribe, 
to which, moreover, men’s fathers before them had gone for their wives, it came 
about that this net of relationships and restrictions had such small meshes that almost 
every individual in the tribe was fast hand and foot, and could escape only by violent 
means. If men cannot take wives with the consent of those in authority, they will 
take them without it, and the natural results of elopement follow. The Kurnai man 
ran off with some girl whom he could not lawfully marry, either with or without the 
aid of the Bunjil Yenjin. 
With the Murring it happened not infrequently that some girl who had been 
promised in marriage, and who did not like her promised husband, ran off with some 
other man. This being discovered, her kindred pursued the couple, and, if possible, 
brought them back. If the intended husband was with the pursuers a fight probably 
* Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p.200. On Australian Medicine Men, Journal of the Anthrop. Inst., p. 34, August, 1886. 
