Note 92.1 — PSYCHE’S TASK

Marriage between cousins allowed in some African tribes on condition that an expiatory sacrifice is offered. Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe about Delagoa Bay, marriages between cousins are as a rule prohibited, and it is believed that such unions are unfruitful. However, custom permits cousins to marry each other on condition that they perform an expiatory ceremony which is supposed to avert the curse of barrenness from the wife. A goat is sacrificed, and the couple are anointed with the green liquid extracted from the half-digested grass in the animal’s stomach. Then a hole is cut in the goat’s skin and through this hole the heads of the cousins are inserted. The goat’s liver is then handed to them, quite raw, through the hole in the skin, and they must tear it out with their teeth without using a knife. Having torn it out, they eat it. The word for liver (shibindji) also means “patience,” “determination.” So they say to the couple, “You have acted with strong determination. Eat the liver now! Eat it in the full light of the day, not in the dark! It will be an offering to the gods.” Then the family priest prays, saying: “You, our gods, So-and-so, look! We have done it in the daylight. It has not been done by stealth. Bless them, give them children!” When he has done praying, the assistants take all the half-digested grass from the goat’s stomach and place it on the wife’s head, saying, “Go and bear children!”92.1 Among the Wagogo of German East Africa marriage is forbidden between cousins who are the children of two brothers or of two sisters, but is permitted between cousins who are the children of a brother and sister respectively. However, in this case it is usual for the wife’s father to kill a sheep and put on a leather armlet, made presumably from the sheep’s skin; otherwise it is supposed that the marriage would be unfruitful.92.2 Thus the Wagogo, like the Thonga, imagine that the marriage of cousins is doomed to infertility unless an expiatory sacrifice is offered and a peculiar use made of the victim’s skin. Again, the Akikuyu of British East Africa forbid the marriage of cousins and second cousins, the children and grandchildren of brothers and sisters. If such persons married, they would commit a grave sin, and all their children would surely die; for the curse or ceremonial pollution (thahu) incurred by such a crime cannot be purged away. Nevertheless it sometimes happens that a man unwittingly marries a first or second cousin; for instance, if a part of the family moves away to another district, it may come about that a man makes the acquaintance of a girl and marries her before he discovers the relationship. In such a case, where the sin has been committed unknowingly, the curse can be averted by the performance of an expiatory rite. The elders take a sheep and place it on the woman’s shoulders; there it is killed and the intestines taken out. Then the elders solemnly sever the intestines with a sharp splinter of wood taken from a bush of a certain sort (mukeo), “and they announce that they are cutting the clan kutinyarurira, by which they mean that they are severing the bond of relationship which exists between the pair. A medicine man then comes and purifies the couple.”93.1 In all these cases we may assume with a fair degree of probability that the old prohibition of marriage between cousins is breaking down, and that the expiatory sacrifice offered when such a marriage does take place is merely a salve to the uneasy conscience of those who commit or connive at a breach of the ancient taboo.