accounts, full of circumstantial detail, concerning beings who introduced various rites, such as circumcision and subincision, and certain implements of material culture, such as the stone knife and the bull-roarer. In general, these narratives are good examples of the kind known as culture-myth, but the point in which they are exceptional is in the prominence they give to social institutions. Not only do they give an account of the introduction of totems, but they even account for the institution of so purely social an institution as exogamy. From two widely separated parts of the continent Howitt[1] records myths dealing with the formation of moieties or clans, while accounts of the institution of marriage regulations occur also in the narratives of the Arunta recorded by Spencer and Gillen and by Strehlow. These are elements of the social order so fundamental and so familiar to those who practise them that they seem the most unlikely subjects for myth. Widespread as is the institution of exogamy among those of rude culture, I know of few other examples[2] of native narratives, mythical or otherwise, dealing with its origin, and it is therefore most necessary to inquire why they should occur among the aborigines of Australia.
In the search for motives which will explain the prominence of social forms in the narratives of the Australians, a fact which will probably occur to every one is the great complexity of their social organisation. The social arrangements of these people are so complex that it is only by prolonged and severe effort that even the trained sociologist succeeds in understanding them fully, and probably there could be counted on the fingers of one hand the sociologists
- ↑ The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 480, 491.
- ↑ As examples from Melanesia, Jos. Meier, (Mythen und Erzählungen der Küstenbewohner der Gazelle-Halbinsel (New-Vommern), 1909, p. 23), gives a myth of the origin of the dual organisation in New Britain, and Suas, (Anthropos, 1912, vol. vii., p. 47), records a similar account from Lepers' Island in the New Hebrides.
X
