Note 74.1 — PSYCHE’S TASK

Severe punishment inflicted for sexual offences among the aborigines of other parts of Australia. Among the tribes in the central parts of North-West Queensland, if a man eloped with a single woman whom he might lawfully marry, but who for any reason was forbidden to him by the tribal council, he had on returning to camp with his wife to run the gauntlet of the outraged community, who hacked his buttocks and shoulders with knives, beat his head and limbs with sticks and boomerangs, and pricked the fleshy parts of his thighs with spears, taking care, however, not to inflict fatal injuries, lest they should incur blood revenge. But if the woman with whom the man had eloped was of a class into which he might not marry, both the culprits were put to death, the relations on both sides tacitly consenting to the execution.74.1 In the Yuin tribe of New South Wales, if a man eloped with a woman of his own tribal subdivision, all the men would pursue him; and if he refused to give the woman up, the sorcerer of the place would probably say to his men, “This man has done very wrong, you must kill him”; whereupon somebody would thrust a spear into him, his relatives not interfering lest the same fate should befall them.74.2 The same punishment was inflicted for the same offence by the Wotjobaluk tribe of North-Western Victoria; but their western neighbours, the Mukjarawaint tribe, not content with killing the guilty man, cut off the flesh off his thighs and upper arms, roasted and ate it, his own brother partaking of the cannibal meal. As for the rest of the body, they chopped it up small and left it lying on a log. The same custom is said to have been observed by the Jupagalk tribe.74.3 Among many tribes of Western Australia, as well as of other parts of that continent, persons who bear the same class-name may not marry. Any such marriage is regarded as incest and rigorously punished. For example, “the union of Boorong and Boorong is to the natives the union of brother and sister, although there may be no real blood relationship between the pair, and a union of that kind is looked upon with horror, and the perpetrators very severely punished and separated, and if the crime is repeated they are both killed.”74.4 On the other side of the continent the Kamilaroi of New South Wales similarly inflicted condign punishment on both the culprits who persisted in marrying each other contrary to the tribal law; the male relations of the man killed him, and the female relations of the woman killed her. Penalty of death inflicted for the crime of speaking to a mother-in-law. The Kamilaroi of the Gwydir River went further; they killed any man who so much as spoke to or held any communication with his mother-in-law,75.1 for one of the most stringent laws of savage etiquette is that which prohibits any direct social intercourse between a man and his wife’s mother. The law has been variously explained,75.2 but a large body of evidence points to the conclusion that this custom of mutual avoidance is simply a precaution to prevent improper relations between the two. Hence a brief consideration of it is appropriate in this place; for to all appearance the custom, though it may be wholesome and beneficial in practice, has originated purely in superstition. But before giving my reasons for thinking so it may be well, for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with savage etiquette, to illustrate the practice itself by a few examples.75.3