academy of sciences) DOMESTIC LIFE AND MARITAL RELATIONS 101 



and the slave was still unpaid. If he can not procure that slave it will probably cost him, in other 

 effects, several times the value of the slave. 



Proceedings of the kind described before are repeated at frequent intervals for a number of 

 years, but with this exception, that on the ensuing visits presents of no great value are bestowed 

 on the father of the expected bride — a bunch of bananas, a piece of venison, or a few chickens, or 

 some such offering are made, with a reiteration of the petition. A capacious porker with a boun- 

 teous supply of sugar-cane brew in big bamboo internodes is brought along occasionally to break 

 down the obdurateness of the householder's heart, until one fine day, under the benign influence of 

 "the cup that cheers," he yields, but intimating that his petitioners can never afford the marriage 

 payments. 3 He will then probably recount the purchase price of this own wife, always with 

 exaggerations; descant on the qualities of his daughter, her strength, her beauty, her diligence, 

 her probable fecundity; and deplore the grievous loss to be sustained by her departure from her 

 parents' side. Whereupon the visitors respond that they are willing to substitute a number of 

 slaves to make up for the loss of the daughter, but that in any case she will not leave the paternal 

 home and that the bridegroom will take up his residence there and help his father-in-law in all 

 things; and so the matter is discussed and the payment of a certain number of slaves is deter- 

 mined in the following manner: 



DETERMINATION OF THE MARRIAGE PAYMENT 



Determination of the marriage payment is the very soul of the whole marriage proceeding. 

 Years and years of service on the part of the would-be husband, presents innumerable on the 

 part of his relatives, and feigned indifference or opposition on the other side have led up to this 

 moment. For the sake of clearness, let us call the father or nearest male relative of the future 

 bride A and the father or nearest male relative of the bridegroom, B. 



A, aided by all the cunning of his relatives, lays down as a condition, let us say, seven slaves 

 and one female relative of B, who is to be a substitute for his daughter. To this B rejoins that 

 it is a high price and impossible of fulfillment, that he is not a warrior chief, nor a datu, nor such 

 a wealthy person as A, and that he can never satisfy such a demand, giving a thousand and one 

 reasons, such as sickness or debt. A responds and belittles him for being so deficient in resources, 

 asks if B wants to get a wife for his son gratuitously, and tells him to go home and buy a slave 

 girl for him. He yells indignation at the top of his voice, probably with his hand on his bolo, in a 

 very menacing way. 



B and his party, seeing that it is unavailing, go home, consult over the matter, and during 

 the course of a year or two take every possible means to procure the necessary slaves. They 

 may be successful in securing one or more, let us say two, and at the same time may manage to 

 get together, say, 5 lances, 6 bolos, 2 jars, 30 plates, and 5 pigs; and so one fine day they start 

 off to A's for another trial. 



B proceeds to make A feel merry before he reports his failure to comply with the demand. 

 This report is usually a tissue of the most atrocious "oriental diplomacies" that the human 

 mind can concoct. A listens to this prologue, interlarded as it always is with ejaculations of 

 coiToboration from B's party. Then A begins: It is an outrage, he will have none of the pigs; 

 the idea of selling his daughter for a bunch of pigs! He gets up and says he will first kill the 

 pigs and then the owner, but his relatives make a pretense at restraining him. After a few hours 

 of this simulation, by which he has induced B to make many gifts, he softens, but as the demand 

 was not complied with to the letter, the payment must be increased, he says, by 4 more pigs, a 

 piece of Chinese cloth, 8 Mandaya skirts, and 2 jars. At this point his relatives interfere. 

 His sister wants three pigs and four skirts. She was midwife at the birth of the girl in question 

 and, due to her contact with -the unclean blood, was approached by a foul spirit and fell sick. 

 Surely she deserves a big payment — 1 female slave, 2 pigs, 2 shell bracelets, and a piece of turkey 

 red cloth. And the third cousin claims that she nursed the child, the future bride, two months 

 during the illness of its mother, and demands two Mandaya skirts. And so the haggling is con- 



' Abal. 



