The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1885-02-27

curious. The father OF a young woman
of high rank looks around for proper
husband for his daughter, and general
| ly takes him from an inferior family.
The young mans relatives pay stip-
ulated sum for the honor he is about to
receive, feast is made, and from that
time "the good and bad of him,
peculiar expression for the better or
worse, is vested in his new owners. He
| is between q son and a servant; ii he
does mischief his wife's family pay the
fine; if he is killed they receive the
blood money for him, and, what is
most peculiar, all he earns by his work
becomes their property, and if they get
tired of him they can send him away
without cent, as poor as when he
came. In the alliance on terms of
equality each contributes in an equal
degree to the common stock, and if the
marriage proves inharmonious sep
aration is effected and the goods and
all that has been gained by the common
labor are divided equally between the
parties and each departs to seek new
and more congenial bonds.
MARRIAGE AND CEREMONIES.
Savage tribes seldepe have any mar
mage ceremony worth mentioning, and
when they do it is of the simplest de-
scription. IN Ceylon .hers s-e ;vo
kinds of marriage; in the one the woman
goes to the mans hut, this fact consti
tuting the marriage, and in the other the
man goes to live in the woman's hut
and with her relatives, thus forming
q connection somewhat similar to the
Sumatra marriage already alluded to.
Among the Turkomans, the husband is
not allowed to visit his wife save by
stealth for year after marriage, and
many other nations have more or less
strongly marked relics of the same Gus
tom. Among some tribes of Arabia the
bride, after marriage, runs away to her
fathers house in the evening. and some
times these flights continut for months
before she will consent to remain per-
manently at her husbands home. In
some of the South African tribes, the
husband is not allowed to see the face
of his wife till the first child is born,
while, according to Xenophon and Stra-
DO, similar custom prevailed among
the Spartans and Cretans. The first
Spanish missionaries who went to Cali
fornia, found no word in the Indian Ian
guages to correspond to the word mar
riage, there being no ceremony about
the matter at all, the pair simply agree
ing on the alliance and the carrying it
out without consulting anybody. Bruce
says that in spite of the fact that Abys-
synia is ostensibly Christian country,
there was in his time no ceremony of
marriage in use among the people of
that land, while the HOttentots OF Africa
not only have no ceremony, but have no
word to designate the difference be-
tween married and an unmarried
woman.
MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE.
Marriage by capture was favorite
method of getting wife in the old days
when wives were valuable for the work
they did rs slaves, and there arc some
reason for believing that, at some time
or other, it has been practiced by
nearly all nations. The Romans UNI
doubleday used this method of provid-
ing themselves with help-meets in that
little affair with the Sabines, and his
torical evidences exist to show that the
Greeks were equally INSCRIPTIONS. In
Australia, among the natives, the gal
liant lover provides himself with good,
stout club and waits in the bushes near
the home of his Dulcinea till she is I'M
protected, when he knocks her down
with the club and carries her off on his
shoulders before she RECEIVERS enough
to make resistance. This is taken as a
matter of course, and so well establish
ed is the custom among these sarageS
that it is played as game among the
children. As tribes of savages either
became more numerous or more civil
lied, so that there was no longer any
need for the forceible capture of a wife,
the ceremony of capture remained, as
such things do, long after its signifi-
canoe had departed. In his book on
Central Asia. Campbell says that: ''On
one occasion heard loud cries from q
village close at hand, and fearing some
quarrel, rode to the spot, and there saw
a man bearing on his back something
covered with a large scarlet cloth; he
was surrounded by twenty or thirty
young fellows, and by them protected
from the desperate attacks make by
large number of young women. On
seeking an explanation of this novel
scene, was told that the man had just
been married, and his burden was his
bride, whom he was conveying to his
own village. Her friends, as is the Gus
tom, were seeking to regain possession
of her, and hurled sticks and stones at
the head of the devoted groom till he
reached the confines of his village"
Throughout nearly all Central Asia,
some relics of this custom are found,
sometimes the bride being mounted on
horseback and the would-be groom
forced to ride after her; sometimes the
suit being pressed by means of a foot
race, and sometimes the custom taking
the form of regular scuffle between
the parties of the contract Among the
Tartars, the marriage is always cele-
brated by a sham-fight between the
syoom's friends and the friends of the
bride. All cases, however, having orig
mated in the same way, and having the
same idea at the bottom.
NEW ZEALAND COUNTING.
In New Zealand it is customary to
have a mock scuffie even after the mar
rage, the custom being no doubt a
relic of the time when the scutfie was
real and in earnest. Yates gives a
good example in describing a wedding
he witnessed: "There was a little oppo-
sition to the wedding. but not till it was
over as is the custom here. The brides
mother came to me the proceed ng after
noon and said she was well pleased that
her daughter was going to be married
to Pehau, but that she must be angry
about ii with her mouth in the prese ice