Ceremonies involving the motive of sorrow are mentioned in several places by Spencer and Gillen. Among the Arunta, "when a man dies his special Unawa or Unawas smear their hair, faces and breasts with white pipeclay and remain silent for a certain time until a ceremony called Aralkililima has been performed."[216] The widow has a special name. In some of the northern tribes she has to keep silence. E. g. "Among the Warramunga ... the widows are not allowed to speak for sometimes as long a period as twelve months, during the whole of which time they communicate only by means of gesture language."[217] Among the Arunta the widow has to live in the woman's camp and suspend, to a large extent, her usual occupations.[218] When she wishes the ban of silence to be removed, she has to perform a ceremony in public, which consists in the main in an offering of vegetable food to the younger brother and sons of the deceased. "The meaning of this ceremony, as symbolized by the gathering of the tubers or grass seed, is that the widow is about to resume the ordinary occupations of a woman's life, which have been to a large extent suspended, while she remained in camp in what we may call deep mourning."[219] Analogous ceremonies of nearly the same duration and involving similar ordeals and privations, are in use in some other tribes: among the Kaitish and Unmatjera the widow has her hair cut off, she has to smear her body over with ashes, during the whole time that mourning lasts, i. e. several months, she has also to keep silence.[220] Amongst all these tribes the women inflict upon themselves the most cruel wounds. "The women seem to work themselves up into a perfect frenzy, and to become quite careless as to the way in which they cut and hack themselves about, with, however, this restriction notable on all such occasions, that however frenzied they apparently become, no vital part is injured, the cutting being confined to such parts as the shoulders, scalp, and legs."[221] The authors give a detailed description of such ordeals undergone by two widows of deceased men in the Warramunga tribe. "The actual widow scores her scalp with a red-hot firestick."[222]
Taking mourning customs as a measure of the intensity of sorrow and grief, it may be seen that here these feelings are supposed to be very strong, as the hardship and ordeals are very great. Of course, there is no question of individual feelings. The widow may be in some cases really glad that her husband has died, as well in Australia as in any of our modern societies. What is shown at any rate is, that society supposes and requires such feelings, and that they are duties according to the social moral code; in fact, that sorrow and grief for the deceased are required by the collective ideas and feelings. Whether these feelings are displayed in order to appease the spirit of the deceased, whether there is real sorrow as a basis for these customs, these are questions irrelevant in this place.
Probably many different motives contributed to form the mourning rites and duties, as they are now in existence. These duties have in Australia apparently not merely a customary, but also a legal character. For we read in Spencer and Gillen: "a younger brother meeting the wife of a dead elder brother out in the bush, performing the ordinary duties of a woman, such as hunting for 'yams,' within a short time of her husband's death, would be quite justified in spearing her."[223] And, again, it is said in another place, that if a woman would not comply with the severe ordeal which is her duty, "she is liable to be severely chastised or even killed by her brother."[224]
Whatever more special explanation might be attempted of all these laws and customs it is certain that they express the fact that the marital bonds are very lasting. The obligations last after the death of the husband, and expiation must be made for the eventual new union. For Spencer and Gillen give a detailed account of all the complex formalities and duties to be performed before the widow can remarry, or rather is given up to the younger brother of the deceased, to whom she belongs by law.[225] After the performance of several ceremonies and a long lapse of time, she may still, if she likes, paint a narrow white band on her forehead, which is regarded as an intimation that she is not anxious to marry at present, as she still mourns, though to a less degree than before, for the dead man.[226] "The spirit of the dead man was supposed to have been watching all these proceedings as he lay at the bottom of the grave."[227]
Unfortunately the other authors do not give anything approaching Spencer and Gillen's full account of burial and mourning. In particular, if there is any description, the actual and tribal relatives are not differentiated. All that I have adduced here from Spencer and Gillen refers to the actual widow. A short remark of Roth may be quoted: "In the Boulia district when a man dies, his nearer relatives have special mourning performances. These nearer relatives, in the case of an adult male, are considered to be the wife and his brother and sisters by the same mother, not his father or mother; with an adult woman, only the brothers and sisters by the same mother."[228] Amongst the Dieri, "a widow is not permitted to speak until the whole of the white clay which forms her 'mourning' has come off without assistance" (perhaps some months).[229] There is also a statement about the husband's mourning. Amongst the Victorian tribes, "when a married woman dies and her body is burned, the husband puts her pounded calcined bones into a little opossum skin bag, which he carries in front of his chest until he marries again, or until the bag is worn out."
To sum up, it may be said, that as far as Spencer and Gillen's evidence may be taken as typical of what burial and mourning is in Australia, the legal and customary aspects of the marriage bonds is not less strongly expressed in the way in which they are dissolved, than it is in the way in which they are brought about.
CHAPTER IV
SEXUAL ASPECT OF MARRIAGE
The next point in our investigation is the sexual aspect of the Australian marriage. Unfortunately it will not be much easier to draw a decisive inference from the evidence in this case than it was in the foregoing one. There is perhaps less patent contradiction between the statements; and we are able here to reduce many of the incongruities to geographical differences. But the whole question is very complicated by the fact that the sexual features of marital life in Australia have caused much discussion in connection with the hypothesis of primitive promiscuity and group marriage. They have been very often interpreted according to this hypothesis. Different customs have been pointed out as unmistakable survivals of previous states of marital communism or group marriage. Group marriage has even been said to be in actual existence amongst some tribes.
In accordance with our opening statement, polemics will be strictly avoided here, particularly in reference to questions of prehistory; and, therefore, we need not concern ourselves with the problem whether certain facts point to the previous existence of group marriage or promiscuity; nor with the problem whether certain features are survivals of a similar state of things.[230] Highly objectionable from our point of view, however, is the fact that our best informants (especially Howitt and Spencer and Gillen) describe the facts of sexual life of to-day in terms of their hypothetical assumptions. To gain, therefore, a clear picture of the actual state of things we shall have to disintegrate all that is hypothetic in the statements from the actual facts.