LISU TRIBES OF THE BURMA-CHINA FRONTIER. 
263 
the bridegroom’s house ; wine, presented by the neighbours, stands in four large 
vessels on the floor, and all are expected to drink deep and to join in the dancing 
and singing, which mark the revels for these days. During this time the bride must 
remain in the house, but she is accompanied by her attendant maiden and may not 
join her husband until the revellers leave on the third evening, when the wine is 
finished and the bride then enters the house with her party. There is no 
abduction in this district and no divorce, even for a childless wife. The 
Rev. J. G. Geis of Myitkyina, who has worked for many years among the 
scattered I v isu villages on the Burma side of the frontier, and to whom we 
are indebted for much interesting information regarding the customs prevalent 
in his district, compares the moral standard of the Iyisu very favourably with 
that of their Kachin neighbours, stating that there is little sexual intercourse 
before marriage and that it is counted a great disgrace for a Risu girl to 
give birth to a child out of wedlock. The father of an illegitimate child has no claim 
on it, such as that of a Kachin father, and he is heavily fined unless a marriage can 
be satisfactorily arranged. In the Sadon and Sima Hill Tracts the village elder or a 
male relative act as go-between, seeking a bride from one of the classes which can 
properly intermarry. The price demanded for a maid is the same as was paid for her 
mother, and is kept in a family record. On the marriage day the village elders proceed 
to the house of the maid , first serving out wine to the youths who will assist them in 
bearing away the bride. At first she will make a show of resistance, kicking and biting 
her carriers, whilst her family cry to the ancestral ghost that their child is being borne 
away and that they are powerless to keep her. Arrived at the village boundary, how- 
ever, the struggling maiden is released and she walks gaily to her future home with the 
wedding party. As she enters the bridegroom’s house a fowl is killed and thrown 
behind her on the threshold, whilst water is sprinkled on the path, to cleanse it and cut 
short the progress of any evil spirit which might design to follow her into the house, 
and guns are fired to notify the village that the bride has been received and welcomed 
there. As the first meal is served the village elder calls upon the ancestral spirits 
of the two houses, and in their spiritual presence the father of the maid says to the 
bridegroom : ‘ ‘ Here I bring to you my child : guard and keep her : hereafter we are 
friends.” Then the middleman says to the man, ” I have found you a wife who is 
handsome and strong : care for her and treat her kindly.” The bridegroom in reply 
addresses the father and go-between, promising that he will play his part, the meal is 
eaten, an offering of food and wine is placed before the ancestral shrine, the three days 
of feasting begins, and the ceremony of marriage is complete. 
We can only add that, although present-day proprieties may demand the offices 
of the middleman in matrimonial negotiations , there is in these highland tracts little 
of the cold-blooded and vicarious match-making, which is usual among the Chinese, 
and the young Ifisus evidently have a personal vote in the management of their love 
affairs. One autumn day it chanced that we were encamped in a village where the moun- 
tain torrent was being bridged, an annual affair, marking the close of the freshets and 
the rainy season. The tribesmen had gathered from every village in the neighbourhood 
