The essential point in connection with these ceremonies is the fact that access is not limited, as in the case of the Dieri, to men who might lawfully marry the woman.  The right is restricted to men of six classes out of the eight, including all four of the other moiety and the two of her own half of her own moiety.  Now whatever else may be deduced from this, one thing is clear, and that is that the custom in its present form, at any rate, took its rise before the eight classes were introduced but after the four classes were already in existence and a fortiori after the phratries were known.  Consequently no argument for promiscuity can be founded on the right of access at initiation.  It cannot be a survival from a time when no marriage regulations were known, for the simple reason that the custom itself bears unmistakeable traces of regulations of a comparatively advanced type.  It may of course be argued that these limitations are of late origin.  How far this is so and why such limitations should have been introduced it is impossible to say; but it is impossible to base an argument for primitive promiscuity on a state of things which is admittedly not primitive unless we have good prima facie grounds for regarding the custom as a survival.  There is nothing in the present case to show that it is not a magical rite.

At other times access is permitted in accordance with class regulations, the husband’s consent being necessary, if indeed he does not actually take the preliminary steps himself.  We have seen that a similar state of things exists in other tribes.  It does not seem necessary to look for the explanation further than the ordinary customs of savage hospitality, the desire to do a favour to men who may be useful.  It is difficult to see why Spencer and Gillen regard the fact that women are lent in this way only to their unawa as a proof of the former existence of group marriage.  Clearly if intercourse is permitted only between certain persons before marriage and only certain persons are allowed to marry, we can hardly be surprised to find that these latter are restricted in the choice of men to whom they may lend their wives after marriage.  The surprising thing would be if it were otherwise.

In addition, as in the tribes we have already considered, irregular access is practised for magical purposes in connection with the performance of ceremonies and the sending out of messengers.  It has already been pointed out that we have no grounds for regarding such practices as survivals; for if we put on sackcloth and ashes as a penance for our misdeeds, it does not follow that this was ever the prevailing costume.  It is even less possible to interpret the ritual lending of wives to messengers as a survival, for, ex hypothesi, the messengers were not of the group which “group-married,” and messengers of any sort point to a stage when inter-tribal relations had made considerable advance and the tribes in question are hardly likely to have been still in the stage of the “undivided commune.”