Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/205

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Native Tribes of South-East Australia.
173

Diagram 3.

Urabunna.

1m younger sister > 4f

2f elder brother > 5m

3m< nupa >6f


Diagram 4.

Dieri.

1m brother > 5f

2f sister > 6m

3f< kami 8f

4m< noa > 8f


I take the Urabunna first. 1 and 2 are husband and wife, so are 5 and 4; 4 is the younger sister of 1; 5 is the elder brother of 2; 3 is the son of 1 and 2, and 6 is the daughter of 4 and 5; 3 and 6 are in the relation of nupa, and therefore marriageable.

Now the Urabunna marriage rule may be thus stated. The proper wife of the man 3 is his mother's elder brother's daughter; or, what is the same thing, his father's younger sister's daughter. In each case this is the woman 6.

The Dieri rule is defined by the Diagram 4. The man 1 and the woman 2 are husband and wife; so are 5 and 6; 1 is the brother (elder or younger) of 5, and 2 is the sister (elder or younger) of 6; 3 is the daughter of 1 and 2, so is 7 of 5 and 6; but they are not marriageable with their respective brothers, being in the kami relation, which always denotes that disability; their children, however, stand in the noa relation, which we know may be rendered as "marriageable." These two tribes, it may be remembered, are located on the opposite sides of Lake Eyre, and their boundaries meet at its southern end.

So far as marriage is concerned, nupa and noa are evidently analogous, but it is the difference between them to which I now invite attention.

The Urabunna rule is certainly the earlier form of this restriction on a former wider range of marriage, for the