“These restrictions, which custom and tradition have instituted within the family, find expression also in the behaviour of the members of families toward each other. The following persons, namely, have to be treated with respect--the daughters by their father, the sons by their mother, the brothers by their sisters. In presence of such relations, as in the presence of a chief, you may not stand, but must sit down; if you are obliged on narrow paths to pass by one of them you must first obtain permission and then do it in a stooping or creeping posture. You allow them everywhere to go in front; you also avoid to drink out of the vessel which they have just used; you do not touch them, but keep always at a certain distance from them; the head especially is deemed sacred.”[88.1] [Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of male and female cousins in some tribes.] In all these cases the custom of mutual avoidance is observed by persons of opposite sex who, though physically capable of sexual union, are forbidden by tradition and public opinion to have any such commerce with each other. Thus far the blood relations whom a man is forbidden to marry and compelled to avoid, are his own mother, his own daughter, and his own sisters. But to this list some people add a man’s female cousins or at least certain of them; for many races draw a sharp line of distinction between cousins according {89} as they are children of two brothers or of two sisters or of a brother and a sister, and while they permit or even prefer marriage with certain cousins, they absolutely forbid marriage with certain others. Now, it is highly significant that some tribes which forbid a man to marry certain of his cousins also compel him to adopt towards them the same attitude of social reserve which in the same or other tribes a man is obliged to observe towards his wife’s mother, his own mother, and his own sisters, all of whom in like manner he is forbidden to marry. [Sidenote: Mutual avoidance of male and female cousins in New Ireland.] Thus among the tribes in the central part of New Ireland (New Mecklenburg) a male and a female cousin, the children of a brother and a sister respectively, are most strictly forbidden by custom to marry each other; indeed this prohibition is described as the most stringent of all; the usual saying in regard to such relations is, “The cousin is holy” (_i tábu ra kókup_). Now, in these tribes a man is not merely forbidden to marry his female cousin, the daughter of his father’s sister or of his mother’s brother; he must also avoid her socially, just as in other tribes a man must avoid his wife’s mother, his own mother, his own daughter, and his own sisters. The cousins may not approach each other, they may not shake hands or even touch each other, they may not give each other presents, they may not mention each other’s names; but they are allowed to speak to each other at a distance of some paces. These rules of avoidance,