Excerpt: ...is called vei-tavaleni. To break through for once the rule of not using European terms, I may remark that vei-tavaleni must of necessity mean both cousin and brother-in-law, and the reason is sufficiently obvious. Your tavale is a brother of the woman to whom you were born married; ergo, your brother-in-law. The fact that you do not marry her makes no difference. She is your natural wife, and he is your natural brother-in-law. Even if your tavale has no sister, he is still your brother-in-law, because, ...
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Excerpt: ...is called vei-tavaleni. To break through for once the rule of not using European terms, I may remark that vei-tavaleni must of necessity mean both cousin and brother-in-law, and the reason is sufficiently obvious. Your tavale is a brother of the woman to whom you were born married; ergo, your brother-in-law. The fact that you do not marry her makes no difference. She is your natural wife, and he is your natural brother-in-law. Even if your tavale has no sister, he is still your brother-in-law, because, potentially, a sister might be born to him, who would be your wife. At this point I thought that I had found an inconsistency in the logic of the system. As the children of vei-ndavolani (concubitants) are tabu, I supposed, naturally, that the children of vei-tavaleni would be tabu also; but I found, to my surprise, that this was not so. Their children became vei-ndavolani (concubitants). It seemed illogical, but I supposed that it was done as a compensation. The parents could not marry because they were of the same sex; therefore, to compensate the system for the loss of a concubitant marriage, their children were made to repair the accident by being concubitants. I pointed this out to Mr. Fison, and he, looking at the system purely from the point of view that it was a development of group marriage, when the entire tribe was divided into two exogamous marrying classes, said that he saw no inconsistency at all. We worked the problem out on paper, and discovered that, with the class marriage as a clue, this fact became perfectly consistent and logical
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