SURVIVALS FROM MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE. 219 



pair, as among the Soligas (India), where the girl and her lover 

 run away to some neighboring village. 



The survivals which follow are in such a disintegrated condi- 

 tion that it is impossible to decide to which class they may prop- 

 erly be referred. It will have been observed that, in all the cere- 

 monies that have been described, the bridegroom is pretended to 

 be regarded as an enemy, a person to be avoided. Hence we can 

 understand the Abyssinian custom described by Mr. Mansfield 

 Parkyns,* who says that, as soon as a young man has become be- 

 trothed to a girl, he may not see her face. If he should chance to 

 see her by stealth, she covers her face, screams, runs away, and 

 hides ; and this though the greatest intimacy may have prevailed 

 between them before the betrothal. A modification of this cus- 

 tom is found in Ceylon, where, if a young man wishes to see the 

 bride whom his father has selected for him, he must go clandes- 

 tinely. If he enters the house it must be under a feigned name, 

 and if he sees his intended he must not address her.f 



If the bridegroom is to be regarded as hostile to the bride, he 

 must, by a similar fiction, be regarded as hostile to her family 

 also ; and hence the many cases in which proposals for marriage 

 must be made through the intervention of third parties, a cus- 

 tom which has neither utility nor convenience to recommend it. 

 Among the Turkomans " the young man does not dare to breathe 

 his wishes to the parents of his beloved, for such is not etiquette, 

 and would be resented as an insult." J In Siam marriages are 

 the subject of much negotiation, undertaken not directly by the 

 parents, but by " go-betweens," nominated by those of the pro- 

 posed bridegroom, who make proposals to the parents of the in- 

 tended bride.* Davis says the same of the Chinese,! and that the 

 two persons principally interested never see each other. In Da- 

 homey it is the custom for a suitor to dispatch two emissaries, a 

 man and a woman, to open negotiations with the family of the 

 girl he wishes to marry. In Samoa, Mr. Pritchard says, A a man 

 never personally woos his lady-love, and, in the case of a chief, it 

 is the privilege of his attendants to do the courting for him. 



These customs are evidently disintegrations of that observed 

 by Caillie' in the western Soudan. There, as soon as the suitor 

 has declared himself, he is not allowed to see the father and 

 mother of his future bride. He takes the greatest care to avoid 

 them, and if by chance they perceive him they cover their faces, 

 as if all ties of friendship were broken. The custom extends be- 

 yond the relations; for, if the lover is of a different camp, he 



* Life in Abyssinia, vol. ii, p. 41. 



f Account of Ceylon, p. 285. 



\ Fraser's Journey, vol. ii, p. 3*72. 



* Bowring, vol. i, p. 118. 



1 Chinese, vol. i, p. 266. 



A Polynesian Reminiscences, p. 134. 



