| A. (m) | marries | B. (f) | |||||
| E. (f) = | C. (m) | tabu | D. (f) | = F. (m) | |||
| G. (f) | Concubitants | H. (m) | |||||
INTOLERANCE OF THE SYSTEM
A. and B. were concubitants, their children tabu. G. and H. being the children of tabu relations are concubitants. They marry, and of course their children being brother and sister are again tabu. But if D. had been a male who had married F. a female, G. and H. would have been tabu. It will thus be seen that the concubitant and the tabu alternate generation after generation. The children of concubitants must be tabu, and the children respectively of tabu must be concubitant.
It must of course happen that persons who are concubitant have a mutual dislike to one another and do not marry, or, since a man cannot marry all his concubitants, or a woman
all her concubitants, the system is dislocated by some of them marrying persons who are in no way related to them. Thus—
| (m)A. | = | B.(f) | |||||
| W.(f) = | C.(m) | D.(f) | = X.(m) | ||||
| Y.(f) = | G.(m) | Concubitant with | H.(f) | = Z.(m) | |||
| L.(m) | tabu | J.(f) | |||||
G. and H. are concubitant, born husband and wife, as were their grandparents A. and B., but they grow up and take a dislike to one another and each marries some one else. Yet the system takes no account of such petty interruptions as likes and dislikes. They were born married, and married they must be so far as their children are concerned. They have each married outside the tribe, yet their children L. and J. are tabu just as much as if G. and H. had married and they were the offspring of the marriage. G. and H. have in fact dislocated the system for all posterity, but the system goes on, refusing to admit the injury done to it. The most striking feature in the system is this oppressive intolerance. It is so indifferent to human affections that if a man dares to choose a woman other than the wife provided for him his disobedience avails him nothing. His concubitant is still his wife, and her children are his children. It will, it is true, give way so far as to recognize as his wife the woman he has chosen, but only on the condition that she becomes his fictitious concubitant, and that all her relatives fall into their places as if she had actually been born his concubitant.
This brings us to a fresh starting-point from which the concubitous relationship is established. Since a man who is the concubitant of a woman is necessarily also the concubitant of all her sisters, by a natural evolution, if he marries a woman unrelated to him by blood, and ipso facto makes her his concubitant, all her sisters become his concubitants also. In the past they would have been his actual wives, for a man could not take one of several sisters—he was in honour bound
to take them all. In the same way a woman and her sisters became the concubitants of all her husband's brothers, and upon his death, she passed naturally to her eldest brother-in-law if he cared to take her. This does not imply polyandry or community among brothers, but rather what is known to anthropologists as Levirate, a woman's marriage to her brother-in-law being contingent on her husband's death.
Tabu Relationships.—Hitherto we have dealt with persons sprung from the respective marriages of a brother and sister, and have not touched upon the offspring respectively of two brothers or two sisters. These are tabu to one another, being, as I have said, regarded as being as closely consanguineous as actual brothers and sisters.