BESIDES the occasional abstinence from certain victuals, which was noticed in the last chapter, there are restrictions in diet of a more durable character.
Thus among the Australian aborigines the younger members of a tribe are, as it seems universally, subject to a variety of such restrictions, from which they are only gradually released as they grow older.[1] In the Wotjobaluk tribe in South-Eastern Australia, for instance, boys are forbidden to eat of the kangaroo and the padi-melon, being told that if they transgress these rules they will fall sick, break out all over with eruptions, and perhaps die. If a man under forty eats the tail part of the emu or bustard, he will turn grey, and if he eats the freshwater turtle he will be killed by lightning. If young men or women of the Wakelbura tribe eat emu, black-headed snake, or porcupine, they will become sick and probably die, uttering the sounds peculiar to the creature in question, the spirit of which is believed to have entered into their bodies.[2] In the Warramunga tribe in Central Australia a man is usually well in the middle age before he is allowed to eat wild turkey, rabbit-bandicoot, and emu.[3] According to certain writers, the object of these restrictions is to reserve the best things for the use of the elders, and, more especially, of the older men;[4] but, on the other hand, it has been remarked that, in looking over the list of animals prohibited, one fails to see any good reasons for the selection, unless they may be assumed to have chiefly sprung from superstitious beliefs.[5] Among the Land Dyaks the young men and warriors are debarred from venison for fear it should render them as timid as the hind.[6] The Moors believe that if a young person before the age of puberty eats wolf’s flesh he will have troubles afterwards.
[1] Curr, The Australian Race, i. 81. Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 53. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 769 sq. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. xxxv. Taplin, ‘Narrinyeri,’ in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 137. Jung, ‘Die Mündungsgegend des Murray und ihre Bewohner,’ in Mittheil. d. Vereins f. Erdkunde zu Halle, 1877, p. 32. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 470 sqq. Iidem, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 611 sq. Eyre, Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, ii. 293.
[2] Howitt, op. cit. p. 769.
[3] Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 612.
[4] Iidem, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 470 sq. Iidem, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 613. Jung, in Mittheil. d. Vereins f. Erdkunde zu Halle, 1877, p. 32.
[5] Brough Smyth, op. cit. i. 234.
[6] St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 186.
There are, further, numerous instances of certain kinds of food being permanently forbidden to certain individuals. In Unyamwezi, south of Victoria Nyanza, women are not permitted to eat fowl, a food which is reserved for the men.[7] Among the Mandingoes of Teesee no woman is allowed to eat an egg, and this prohibition is so rigidly adhered to that “nothing will more affront a woman of Teesee than to offer her an egg”; the men, on the other hand, eat eggs without scruple, even in the presence of their wives.[8] Among the Bayaka, a Bantu people in the Congo Free State, both fowls and eggs are forbidden to women; “if a woman eats an egg she is supposed to become mad, tear off her clothes and run away into the bush.”[9] The Bahima of Enkole, in the Uganda Protectorate, allow men to eat beef and the meat of certain antelopes and of buffalo, whereas women are generally allowed to eat beef only.[10] The people of Darfur, in Central Africa, prohibit their women from eating an animal’s liver, because they think that a person may increase his soul by partaking of it, and women are believed to have no souls.[11] The Miris of Northern India prize tiger’s flesh as food for men, but consider it unsuitable for women, as “it would make them too strong-minded.”[12] In the Australian tribes some articles of food are entirely interdicted to females.[13] The natives inhabiting the neighbourhood of Cape York forbid women to eat various kinds of fish, including some of the best, “on the pretence of causing disease in women, although not injurious to the men.”[14] In the Sandwich Islands, again, women were not allowed to eat hog’s flesh, turtle, and certain kinds of fruit, as cocoa and banana.[15] Many of these prohibitions have been represented as signs of the low condition of the female sex; but a more intimate knowledge of the facts connected with them would perhaps show that they have some other foundation than the mere selfishness of the men. For sometimes the latter also are subject to very similar restrictions. Among the Bahuana, in the Congo Free State, “women are forbidden to eat owls or other birds of prey, but are permitted to eat frogs, from which men are obliged to abstain under penalty of becoming ill.”[16] With reference to the natives of New Britain, Mr. Powell states that, whilst in one place the women are prohibited from eating pigs or tortoises, the men are, in another place, prohibited from eating anything but human flesh, fowls, or fish.[17] In the Caroline Islands the men are forbidden to eat a common blackbird, Lamprothornis—which is a favourite food of the women—because it is believed that anyone who did so, and afterwards climbed a cocoa-tree, would fall down and perish.[18] In some Dyak tribes on the Western branch of the river of Sarawak, goats, fowls, and the fine kind of fern (paku), which forms an excellent vegetable, are forbidden food to the men, though the women and boys are allowed to partake of them.[19]
[7] Reichard, ‘Die Wanjamuesi,’ in Zeitschr. d. Gesellsch. f. Erdkunde zu Berlin, xxiv. 321.