The avoidance in all these tribes between a man and the mother of his wife was very marked, and the Ngarigo practice will serve as a good illustration. A woman from the time her daughter was married must not see her son-in- law, or even hear his name spoken. If she heard any one mention his name, she would put her fingers in her ears and say, "Gungo-wa" that is, "Be quiet."
When a Ngarigo man died and left a widow, she did not go to his brother who was of the same mother, but to the son of his father's elder brother. This was in fact under their system of relationship to his elder brother, which falls into line with the practice of other tribes, for instance the Kurnai.
With these tribes ends the sequence of the two-class system in this direction, being followed by the four sub-class system of the Wiradjuri to the north and the four sub-class system of the Kamilaroi to the north-east.
Tribes with Four Sub-Classes and Female Descent
I now pass on to the consideration of tribes which have four sub-classes with descent in the female line, and of which the Kamilaroi may be taken as the type.
Although a comparatively complete list of sub-class names of the Kamilaroi were, I believe, first published by the Rev. Mr. Ridley, his attention had been previously called to them by Mr. E. T. Lance, a settler living on the Clarence River. In 1871 Mr. Ridley pointed them out to Dr. Lorimer Fison, who sent a memorandum on them to Dr. Lewis H. Morgan, following Mr. Ridley's method of spelling, and in that guise they appear in Dr. Morgan's Ancient Society.[1]
Subsequently Mr. Lance informed Dr. Fison that the spelling aforesaid did not represent the sound of the words. After careful inquiry the spelling now given was adopted,[2] and appears to come as near as possible to the aboriginal pronunciation.
