NATIVE CUSTOMS 51 



mony is essentially symbolic. The eating of rujak signifies that 

 these two young people, avIio sit so solemnly on the floor, a,re 

 preparing to enter into the bond in which they may taste 

 together all the sweets and bitters of life ; but I have not 

 heard of any man who, coming upon too much chilli, gained 

 timely experience from the rujak. When the singing is over 

 and much incense has been burned, the bride and bridegroom 

 rise from the floor, and set out side by side from the house 

 on a journey to the parents of the bridegroom. An umbrella 

 is held over each of them, and the procession forms for the 

 return visit. Upon the house steps, the bridegroom's mother 

 awaits the couple, and when they have mounted to the 

 threshold, she takes a long scarf, called a slendang, and ties 

 them together round the middle, in the sight of all the people. 

 The happy couple stand face to face, with their noses almost 

 touching, whilst the bridegroom's mother produces rice, 

 boiled and stained with kunyet, and solemnly feeds them with 

 a spoon. It is really a curious sight, for the queer expres- 

 sion that the false eyebrows lend to the pale yellow faces 

 gives the young couple rather a sadly comic aspect, and the 

 business of feeding with a spoon two people tied nose to nose 

 is apt to appear ludicrous to a crude Westerner. The 

 festivities are now continued in the house of the bridegroom's 

 parents, but, in the feasting that follows, the poor young 

 people take no part, for they sit solemnly aside, with very 

 demure faces, until the whole business flags and comes to an 

 end at about four o'clock in the morning. 



After this very trying ordeal, they adjourn to their own 

 house, if they have one, or, if not, to the house of either of 

 their parents ; and they embark upon their career of married 

 life. 



It is easy to see in the procedure of the marriage cere- 

 mony the remains of the more primitive marriage customs 

 of the original tribal bands of the Malay stock. The mimic 

 warfare of the capture of the bride, and the feigned resistance 

 of her mother, are mere pale ghosts of the practices of the 

 days in which a man sallied out from his home, and, with the 



