From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Sat 02 Sep 2000 - 22:51:03 EEST
David Dunham:
> Although King of Dragon Pass doesn't worry about every marriage,
> every one it does worry about happens between two different clans --
> isn't that the definition of exogamy?
That would the definition of _an_ exogamous marriage, yes. If one
says 'exogamous clan' it suggests to me that's either the norm or
even the invariable custom, which isn't what I inferred (rightly
or wrongly) from KoDP. Some of the 'we women need husbands'
scenes and outcomes imply that marriageable men are to be found
within the clan, don't they? (Perhaps I misrecall or misinterpret.)
> I don't think steads and derbhfines map at all in
> Delela (there are steads, and there are derbhfines, but not all
> members of the latter live in one of the former), and I don't think
> Heortlings really have derbhfines.
My mistook, sorry. (Thank heavens for at least slight qualification.)
You think that they're often multi-stead affairs, or that steads
or explicitly more heterogeneous in composition?
The reason I use this comparison (about the Heortlings in particular)
is that I get the impression several people think of bloodlines
as being (typically at least) relatively small, extended-family-sized
groups. I especially think this when people start talking about
them as if they were 'corporate', or 'legal individuals', or otherwise
implying they function as a unitary social group, without specifying
how the heck this works...
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