The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his
mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
In the Yuin tribes of New South Wales the rule which forbade a man
to hold any communication with his wife's mother was very strict. He
might not look at her or even in her direction. It was a ground of
divorce if his shadow happened to fall on his mother-in-law: in that
case he had to leave his wife, and she returned to her parents. In
New Britain the native imagination fails to conceive the extent and
nature of the calamities which would result from a man's
accidentally speaking to his wife's mother; suicide of one or both
would probably be the only course open to them. The most solemn form
of oath a New Briton can take is, "Sir, if I am not telling the
truth, I hope I may shake hands with my mother-in-law."
Where the shadow is regarded as so intimately bound up with the life
of the man that its loss entails debility or death, it is natural to
expect that its diminution should be regarded with solicitude and
apprehension, as betokening a corresponding decrease in the vital
energy of its owner.
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