S.A. NATIVES AND PRIMITIVE FOLK CUSTOM. 4II 



reminds one of the symbolic warning of a death in the lodge in 

 the silent breaking of a pot by the deathbode in the reed fence 

 before his mother's door. Ancient as these puberty rites must 

 be — judged from their widespread correspondence in idea and 

 even in detail — the great frequency of circumcision among 

 Bantu tribes, Hottentot, Bushman, Australian and of old (ac- 

 cording to Herodotus) among Egyptians, Colchians, Ethi- 

 opians, Phoenicians, and generally among Arabs and other 

 Mohammedans, at Ishmael'sage or younger (the Jewish circum- 

 cision of infants being probably an anticipation of the ancient 

 Semitic age for the rite) imjjlies a very long development before 

 they reached such a perfect adjustment to the purposes of tribal 

 organisation (involved as it is with totemistic taboos on certain 

 marriages, forming elaborate tables of forbidding affinity), and 

 to the whole growth of the marriage custom, so various in dif- 

 ferent races. Unfortunately, I am not sufficiently learned in the 

 ins and outs of totemism, but Mr. Andrew Lang has done a 

 great deal to elucidate the rise of the gens, tribe, and phratry 

 of Greece and Rome, in comparison with the totem kins of 

 savages, and I must refer you to his books. What I am con- 

 cerned to note is that although the systematic training of regi- 

 ments of tribal youths at the beginning of the marriageable age 

 must have been comparatively late in prehistoric time, yet we 

 find it in ancient Europe conducted (save for the operation) on 

 the same principle of svstematised severity as among the natives 

 of South Africa. Another parallel is that the Ephebi cut off 

 and burnt their hair. Basuto boys cut it on entering the lodge, 

 and cut and burn it on coming out — the law of the Nazarite. 

 As to the marriage itself, some Bantu tribes are endogamous 

 like the Bataung, others exogamous and some of these latter 

 pairing for intermarriage as the Bakoena (crocodile clan) with 

 the Bafokeng, Batlokoa with the Basia. The method of getting 

 a wife by capture seems to have characterised a period preceding 

 that of dowry paying both in Europe and in Africa. The most 

 familiar examples in tradition are the Sabine Rape and the 

 story of the Benjamites in Jiidges when they carried off the 

 maidens of Shiloh. In Cardigan it is said to be or have been 

 the custom for the bride to ride off behind her father, a more 

 respectable form of that of Central Asia where the bride rides 

 off on her own account and has to be caught by the bridegroom. 

 At Sparta the. bride was brought home clandestinely, disguised 

 as a youth with short hair, while the groom continued to fre- 

 quent the youth's mess for some time, till the father, who had 

 of course known all along, recognised the marriage. At Rome 

 the bride's being carried over the doorstep on her introduction 

 to her new home is supposed to refer to primitive capture. In 

 parts of England it is not etiquette for the parents to attend the 

 wedding: it would have been consenting to elopement. This 

 fiction of feud between the two families, and even between the 

 wife and husband, survives in many forms. The Sabine ladies, 

 it will be remembered, were long verv sulkv. Herodotus men- 

 tions a similar custom in Ionia, of the wife not speaking to the 

 husband by name, which corresponds to the IilonipJni custom 



