ABSTRACT
In any study of the relations of men and women these three issues: choice, marriage age, and polygyny repeatedly emerge. Marriage was prohibited between the descendants of a common grandparent, or a great-grandfather in the paternal line. The objection to marriage between near kin, such as between children of brothers, was firstly that cattle would not pass from one lineage to another: the same people could not both provide and receive marriage cattle. Secondly, if kin married 'people were astonished' and therefore barrenness or madness was feared. In a third case there was no illness but strong disapproval of a man who had seduced a girl who was the great-great-granddaughter of his great-grandfather in the male line. In a fourth case, acute gonorrhoea was attributed to the curse of men shocked by a chief's son seducing his father's half-sister, even though it was known that he already had the disease at the time of his wrongdoing.
