In the Annan River tribe, Mr. Howitt gives the phratries as Walar (a Bee), and Marla (a Bee), doubtless two Bees of different species.[23] In this case two names of matrimonial classes, Walar and Jorro, also mean Bee. Other cases of conjectural interpretation of phratry names might be given, but where the phratry names can be certainly translated they are names of animals, in all Australian cases known to me except one. When the phratry names cannot be translated, the reason may be that they were originally foreign names, borrowed, with the phratriac institution itself, by one tribe from another. Thus if tribes with totems Eagle Hawk and Crow (Biliara and Waa, let us say) borrowed the phratriac institution from a Mukwara-Kilpara tribe, they might take over Mukwara and Kilpara as phratry names, while not knowing, or at last forgetting, their meaning.
Borrowing of songs and of religious dances is known to be common in the tribes, and it is certain that the Arunta are borrowing four class names from the north. Again, several tribes have the Kamilaroi class names (Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, Kubbi), but have not the Kamilaroi phratry names, Kupathin and Dilbi. Thus the Wiraidjuri, with Kamilaroi class names, have not Kamilaroi phratries, but have Mukula (untranslated), and Budthurung (Black Duck). The Wonghibon, with Kamilaroi class names, have phratries Ngielbumurra and Mukumurra. On the other hand the Kaiabara tribe, far north in Queensland, have the Kamilaroi phratry names Dilebi and Kubatine (= Dilbi and Kupathin), but their class names are not those of the Kamilaroi.[24]
It may be that some tribes, which had already phratries not of the Kamilaroi names, borrowed the Kamilaroi classes, while other tribes having the Kamilaroi phratries evolved, or elsewhere borrowed classes of names not those of the Kamilaroi.
Again, when the four or eight class system has taken firm hold, doing the work of the phratries, tribes often forget the meaning of the phratry names, or forget the names themselves. Once more, the phratry names may once have designated animals, whose names were changed for others, in the course of daily life, or by reason of some taboo. All these causes, with the very feeble condition of Australian linguistic studies, hamper us in our interpretations of phratry and class names. Often the tribes in whose language they originally occurred may be extinct. But we have shown that many phratry names are names of animals, and that the animals which give names to phratries often occur, in Australia as in America, as totems within their own phratries.
We have thus discovered the two lost totem kins!
Thus, if only for once, conjectures made on the strength of a theory are proved to be correct by facts later observed. We guessed (i.) that in the phratries should be totem-kin animals identical with the phratriac animals. We guessed (ii.) that the phratriac names of unknown sense might be identical in meaning with the actual everyday names of the totem animals. And we guessed (iii.) for reasons of early marriage law (as conjectured in our system) that the totem kins of the same names as the phratries would be found each in the phratry of its own name—if discovered in Australia at all.
All three conjectures are proved to be correct. The third was implied in Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old hypothesis, that there were two original groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and that the totem kins were segmented out of them, so that each original animal-named group would necessarily head its own totemic colonies. But this, in many cases, as we have seen, is what it does not do, and another animal of its genus heads the opposite phratry.
Not accepting Mr. Frazer's old theory, I anticipated the discovery of Eagle Hawk totem kin in Eagle Hawk phratry, and of Crow in Crow phratry, for reasons less simple and conspicuous. It has been shown, and is obvious that, by exogamy and female descent, each local group of animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, would come to contain members of every group name except its own. When the men of Crow local group had for generations never married a woman of Crow name, and when the wives, of other names, within Crow local group had bequeathed these other names to their children, there could be, in Crow local group, no Crow by descent, nor any Eagle Hawk by descent in Eagle Hawk local group.
Suppose that these two local groups, each full of members of other animal names derived from other groups by maternal descent, made connubium, and became phratries containing totem kins. What, then, would be the marriageable status of the two kins which bare the phratry names? All Crows would be, as we saw, by my system, in Eagle Hawk phratry; all Eagle Hawks would be Crow phratry (or other phratries, or "sub-phratries," if these existed). They could not marry, of course, within their own phratries, that was utterly out of the question. But, also, they could not marry into the opposite phratries, lately local groups, because these bore their own old sacred local group names. For the the law of the local group had been, "No marriage within the name of the local group," "No Crow to marry into local group Crow." Yet here is Crow who, by phratry law, cannot marry into his own phratry, Eagle Hawk; while, if he marries into phratry Crow, he contravenes the old law of "No marriage within the local group of your own name." That group, to be sure, is now an element in a new organisation, the phratry organisation, but, as Dr. Durkheim says in another case, "The old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives."[25]
This quandary would necessarily occur, under the new conditions, and in the new legal situation created by the erection of the two animal-named local groups into phratries.