CHAPTER VII

The Incest Tabu

On the south coast of Bauro, at Parigina and elsewhere, intercourse between brother and sister (actual brother and sister) is forbidden. A brother must never:

1. Name his sister.

2. Approach her.

3. Laugh or play in her presence.

4. Touch anything belonging to her or even lying near her.

5. Go into a house where she is.

6. Enter the same canoe.

7. Tread on her bed mat.

8. Meet her in the path (one turns into the bush).

9. Go into the garden she is in.

10. Speak to her.

And these restrictions hold even when both are grown up and married, and until their death.¹

Rivers mentions also that a brother who has avoided a sister throughout life "is not permitted to enter the house in which she lay dead."²

¹Fox, C.E.n/an/an/an/a, "Social Organization in San Cristoval, Solomon Islands," 49: 143–144.

² Rivers, W. H. R., Social Organization, 65.