Sometimes Her Head Is Shaved, Except One Lock Of Hair,
Which Is Left Her, And Even That Depends On The
Will of her husband,
who has it likewise in his choice whether he will receive her again
or not; if
He resolves never to admit her they are both at liberty
to marry whom they will. There is another custom amongst them yet
more extraordinary, which is, that the wife is punished whenever the
husband proves false to the marriage contract; this punishment
indeed extends no farther than a pecuniary mulct, and what seems
more equitable, the husband is obliged to pay a sum of money to his
wife. When the husband prosecutes his wife's gallant, if he can
produce any proofs of a criminal conversation, he recovers for
damages forty cows, forty horses, and forty suits of clothes, and
the same number of other things. If the gallant be unable to pay
him, he is committed to prison, and continues there during the
husband's pleasure, who, if he sets him at liberty before the whole
fine be paid, obliges him to take an oath that he is going to
procure the rest, that he may be able to make full satisfaction.
Then the criminal orders meat and drink to be brought out, they eat
and drink together, he asks a formal pardon, which is not granted at
first; however, the husband forgives first one part of the debt, and
then another, till at length the whole is remitted.
A husband that doth not like his wife may easily find means to make
the marriage void, and, what is worse, may dismiss the second wife
with less difficulty than he took her, and return to the first; so
that marriages in this country are only for a term of years, and
last no longer than both parties are pleased with each other, which
is one instance how far distant these people are from the purity of
the primitive believers, which they pretend to have preserved with
so great strictness. The marriages are in short no more than
bargains, made with this proviso, that when any discontent shall
arise on either side, they may separate, and marry whom they please,
each taking back what they brought with them.
Chapter IV
An account of the religion of the Abyssins.
Yet though there is a great difference between our manners, customs,
civil government, and those of the Abyssins, there is yet a much
greater in points of faith; for so many errors have been introduced
and ingrafted into their religion, by their ignorance, their
separation from the Catholic Church, and their intercourse with
Jews, Pagans, and Mohammedans, that their present religion is
nothing but a kind of confused miscellany of Jewish and Mohammedan
superstitions, with which they have corrupted those remnants of
Christianity which they still retain.
They have, however, preserved the belief of our principal mysteries;
they celebrate with a great deal of piety the passion of our Lord;
they reverence the cross; they pay a great devotion to the Blessed
Virgin, the angels, and the saints; they observe the festivals, and
pay a strict regard to the Sunday.
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