RALPH FITCH a.d. 



1583-91- 

 with their husbands when they die, if they will not, their 

 heads be shaven, and never any account is made of them 

 afterward. The people goe all naked save a litle cloth [II. i. 256.] 

 bound about their middle. Their women have their 

 necks, armes and eares decked with rings of silver, 

 copper, tinne, and with round hoopes made of Ivorie, 

 adorned with amber stones, and with many agats, and 

 they are marked with a great spot of red in their fore- 

 heads, and a stroke of red up to the crowne, and so it 

 runneth three maner of wayes. In their Winter, which 

 is our May, the men weare quilted gownes of cotton like 

 to our mattraces and quilted caps like to our great 

 Grocers morters, with a slit to looke out at, and so 

 tied downe beneath their eares. If a man or woman 

 be sicke and like to die, they will lay him before their 

 idols all night, and that shall helpe him or make an ende 

 of him. And if he do not mend that night, his friends 

 will come and sit with him a litle and cry, and after- 

 wards will cary him to the waters side and set him upon 

 a litle raft made of reeds, and so let him goe downe 

 the river. When they be maried the man and the 

 woman come to the water side, and there is an olde 

 man which they call a Bramane, that is, a priest, a cowe, 

 and a calfe, or a cowe with calfe. Then the man and 

 the woman, cowe and calfe, and the olde man goe into 

 the water together, and they give the olde man a white 

 cloth of foure yards long, and a basket crosse bound 

 with divers things in it : the cloth hee laieth upon the 

 backe of the cowe, and then he taketh the cowe by the 

 ende of the taile, and saieth certaine wordes : and she 

 hath a copper or a brasse pot full of water, and the man 

 doeth hold his hand by the olde mans hand, and the 

 wives hand by her husbands, and all have the cowe by new marted 

 the taile, and they poure water out of the pot upon the folks together 

 cowes taile, and it runneth through all their hands, and h ^^^ 

 they lade up water with their handes, and then the olde ^^"^j^-J' ^^^ 

 man doeth tie him and her together by their clothes. ^Mexuans^in 

 Which done, they goe round about the cowe and calfe, old time. 



479 



