) visitors or
others without _pirraurus_ of their own, the rights being in the latter
case for a very short period and not dependent on recognition by the
totem-kin, so far as Dr Howitt's narrative is a guide. Now unless "group
marriage" was very different from what it is commonly represented to be,
the essence of it was that all the men of one class had sexual rights
over the women of another class. How far does this picture coincide with
the features of the _pirrauru_, which is regarded as a survival of it?
In the first place _pirrauru_ is created by a ceremony, which is
performed, not by the head, nor even in the Wakelbura tribe, by a member
of the supposed intermarried classes of the earlier period; but by the
heads of the totem-kins of the individual men concerned. Now it is quite
unthinkable that the right of class promiscuity, to use the correct
term, should ever have been exercised subject to any such restriction;
even were it otherwise the performance of the ceremony would more
naturally fall into the hands of tribal, phratriac, or class authorities
than of the heads of totem-kins. Then too if _pirrauru_ is a survival of
group marriage we should expect the ceremony to be performed for the
_tippa-malku_ union and not for the _pirrauru_.

Again if _tippa-malku_ is later and _pirrauru_ earlier, what is the
meaning of the regulation that the woman must first be united in
_tippa-malku_ marriage before she can enter into the _pirrauru_
relationship? On the "group marriage" theory this fact demands to be
explained, no less than the different position of men and women in this
respect. We have seen that freedom in sexual matters is accorded to both
bachelors and spinsters. It is therefore from no sense of the value of
chastity, from no jealousy of the future _tippa-malku_ husband's rights,
that the female is excluded from the _pirrauru_ relation until she has a
husband.

Again, if _pirrauru_ is a relic of former rights, now restricted to a
few of the group which formerly exercised them, why is the husband's
consent needed before the _pirrauru_ relation is set up, and why is the
_pirrauru_ relation, once established, not permanent (assuming that my
reading of Dr Howitt is right)?

Once more, if _pirrauru_ is a right, how comes it that a brother has to
purchase the right, when he becomes a widower[177]? What too is the
meaning of the transference of _pirrauru_ women to strangers in return
for gifts?

All these points