74 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



likely to prove happy. Many young men of the 

 upper class marry girls of the same class belonging 

 to neighbouring villages of their own people, and 

 in some cases this choice falls on a girl of a village 

 of some other tribe. A marriage of the latter kind 

 is often encouraged by the chiefs and elder people, 

 in order to strengthen or to restore friendly relations 

 between the villages. 



The initiative is taken in nearly all cases by the 

 youth. He begins by paying attentions somewhat 

 furtively to the girl who attracts his fancy. He 

 will often be found passing the evening in her 

 company in her parents' room. There he will 

 display his skill with the keluri, or the Jew's harp, 

 or sing the favourite love-song of the people, 

 varying the words to suit the occasion. If the girl 

 looks with favour on his advances, she manages to 

 make the fact known to him. Politeness demands 

 that in any case he shall be supplied by the women 

 with lighted cigarettes. If the girl wishes him to 

 stay, she gives him a cigarette tied in a peculiar 

 manner, namely by winding the strip which confines 

 its sheath of dried banana leaf close to the narrow 

 mouth-piece ; whereas on all other occasions this 

 strip is wound about the middle of the cigarette. 

 The young man thus encouraged will repeat his 

 visits. If his suit makes progress, he may hope 

 that the fair one will draw out with a pair of brass 

 tweezers the hairs of his eyebrows and lashes, while 

 he reclines on his back with his head in her lap. 

 If these hairs are very few, the girl will remark that 

 some one else has been pulling them out, an 

 imputation which he repudiates. Or he complains 

 of a headache, and she administers scalp-massage by 

 winding tufts of hair about her knuckles and sharply 

 tugging them. When the courtship has advanced 

 to this stage, the girl may attract her suitor to the 

 room by playing on the Jew's harp, with which she 



