pirrauru husband seems to have exceptional privileges, for we have seen that under ordinary circumstances the tippa-malku husband has exclusive rights at ordinary times.  But we must probably understand the passage to mean that the lending of pirraurus takes place at tribal meetings[179] or on other occasions when the right of the husband is in abeyance.  In either case, the facts tell far more strongly in favour of the view suggested here than in favour of group marriage.

There is another factor to be considered.  Abductions and elopements are merely ordinary amenities of married life among the aborigines of Australia.  We have seen that it is the duty of the pirrauru husband to protect the wife during the absence of the tippa-malku husband.  Clearly this is a sort of insurance against the too bold suitor or the too fickle wife, unless indeed the pirrauru himself is the offender, a point on which Dr Howitt has nothing to say, though Mr Siebert’s evidence may be fairly interpreted to mean that such occurrences are not known.

We shall see below in connection with the question of the jus primae noctis that special privileges are sometimes accorded to men of the husband’s totem or class in return for assistance in capturing the wife.  Now assuming that a wife is abducted or elopes, it is, I think, on the same persons that the duty of aiding the injured husband would fall.  Whether this is so or not, the men of his own totem are those with whom a man’s relations are, in most tribes, the closest.  We have seen that the heads of the totem-kins play an important part in assigning pirraurus.  Now although it is actually the practice for men of different totems to exchange wives, it by no means follows that it was always the case.  The element of adelphic polyandry, for example, may well have upset the original relations and brought about a practice of exchange between men of different totems.  At any rate the theory here suggested affords an explanation of the part played by the totem headmen, and on the theory of group marriage their share in the transaction remains absolutely mysterious.

In connection with these possible explanations of the pirrauru custom, it is important to observe that there are duties in regard to food owed by the pirrauru wife to her spouse, when her husband is absent.  Now it is hardly conceivable that in a state of “group marriage” any such practice should have obtained.  A woman would doubtless have collected food for the man with whom she was actually cohabiting; but in the case of the pirrauru relation, the absence of the tippa-malku wife of her pirrauru spouse must coincide with the absence of her own tippa-malku husband before this position is reached.  So long as only one tippa-malku partner is absent, the pirrauru spouse is under the obligation of lightening the labours of the woman whose place she sometimes occupies, and this is very far from what we should expect in the “group marriage” stage.