Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/68

This page has been validated.
56
KINSHIP AND

his people the term tabu was applied both to grandparents and to the father's sister's child. I went into the whole subject as fully as was possible with only one witness, but in spite of his obvious intelligence and good faith, I remained doubtful whether the information was correct. The feature in question, however, occurs in the list of Trobriand terms drawn up for Dr. Seligmann[1] by Mr. Bellamy, and with this double warrant it must be accepted. It is a feature which would follow from marriage with the daughter's daughter, for by this marriage one who was previously a father's sister's daughter becomes the wife of a grandfather and thereby attains the status of a grandparent. The feature exists alone, and, further, it is combined with other applications of the term which deprive it of some of its significance; nevertheless, the fact that a peculiar and exceptional feature of a Melanesian system of relationship is such as would follow naturally from a form of marriage which is practised in another part of Melanesia cannot be passed over. Standing alone, it would be wholly insufficient to justify the conclusion that the marriage with the daughter's daughter was ever prevalent among the Massim, but in place of expressing a dogmatic denial, let us look for other features of Massim sociology which may have been the results of such a marriage.

In Wagawaga[2] there is a peculiar term, warihi,

  1. See The Melanesians of British New Guinea, Cambridge, 1910, p. 707.
  2. Ibid., pp. 482 and 436.