Although the Nuer are generally described as ‘naked’, the ethnographic literature and photographs suggest that they hold certain notions about ‘nakedness’ and ‘nudity’ which prescribe wearing or not wearing certain garments or ornaments in certain social situations. Some of these notions seem closely related to important Nuer conceptual categories of their social groups and their world, especially those related to sexuality, marriage, and affinity, and the process of changing from one social status or moral state to another. Some of these are considered in this paper.

Institutionalized ‘joking relationships’ occur between several different categories of kin and affines, and between groups or categories of varying inclusiveness. Thus brothers-in-law, mother's brothers and sister's sons, and kinsmen of alternate generations are frequent categories between whom joking relationships exist; and localities, villages, clans, and peoples or ‘tribes’ may have joking relationships with one another, variously or simultaneously. Radcliffe-Brown (1952, p. 95) rightly points out that if such behaviour is to be adequately explained, all of the contexts in which it occurs must be taken into account. He also indicates the further ramifications of the problem by placing it in the wider context of ‘alliances’. Thus ‘alliance by the joking relationship may exist separately or combined in several different ways’ with alliances ‘(1) through inter-marriage, (2) by exchange of goods or services, (3) by blood-brotherhood or exchanges of names or sacra’, and so on (1952, p. 102).

The Northern Gurage subgroup of Ethiopian Semitic consists of three languages, Soddo (also known as Aymälläl), Gogot (or Dobbi), and Muxǝr. Grouping these languages together is contrary to the general classification of Gurage hitherto adopted, which puts Soddo as the unique representative of Northern Gurage, and Masqan, Gogot and Muxǝr as a special branch of Western Gurage. We disagree with this classification, propose a new one with three Northern Gurage languages, and dissociate Mäsqan from Gogot by putting it as the easternmost representative of Western Gurage, the only one of its type. It is considered that the phenomenon to be dealt with—a common feature of Soddo, Gogot, and Muxǝr, and of these three only—is enough to justify this new classification, though there is other evidence.

In the tradition of van Gennep anthropologists have studied puberty rites mainly as rites of passage marking changes in status at the crises of life and, more recently, the role which these ceremonies play in the ordering and reordering of social relations. My purpose here is to approach Zulu puberty rites from a different angle: to examine them in the context of a system of beliefs and values underlying a whole group of ritual activities for the welfare of the community—for health, for rain, for fertility in man and beast. This context was suggested to my mind when, a few years ago, I attended a spring ceremonial in the form of hoeing a field in honour of Inkosazana or Nomkhubulwana, a maiden deity. These rites, long thought to have died out, have not only survived in outlying parts of the country, but have lately been revived in many areas, some quite close to Durban. When I heard the songs that were being sung in this ceremony it was suddenly brought home to me that this rite to secure good crops was conceived of in terms of a girl's puberty ceremony. Inkosazana, personification of nature, was symbolized as standing on the threshold of summer like a girl at her puberty ceremony, ready for marriage and procreation. These puberty songs form part also of a number of other rituals associated with Inkosazana rites to combat pests and epidemics and the herding of the cattle for a day by girls, a rite which Gluckman, mistakenly in my opinion, has interpreted as a ritual of rebellion. My main concern in this paper is to present and analyse some of the Zulu girls' puberty songs (reproduced in Appendix II), to show how they are connected with ideas of morality and to indicate briefly the relation of puberty rites to rituals associated with the deity Inkosazana.