On Fast-Days They Never Drink But At
Their Meat, And The Priests Never Communicate Till Evening, For Fear
Of Profaning Them.
They do not think themselves obliged to fast
till they have children either married or fit to be married, which
yet doth not secure them very long from these mortifications,
because their youths marry at the age of ten years, and their girls
younger.
There is no nation where excommunication carries greater terrors
than among the Abyssins, which puts it in the power of the priests
to abuse this religious temper of the people, as well as the
authority they receive from it, by excommunicating them, as they
often do, for the least trifle in which their interest is concerned.
No country in the world is so full of churches, monasteries, and
ecclesiastics as Abyssinia; it is not possible to sing in one church
or monastery without being heard by another, and perhaps by several.
They sing the psalms of David, of which, as well as the other parts
of the Holy Scriptures, they have a very exact translation in their
own language; in which, though accounted canonical, the books of the
Maccabees are omitted. The instruments of music made use of in
their rites of worship are little drums, which they hang about their
necks, and beat with both their hands; these are carried even by
their chief men, and by the gravest of their ecclesiastics. They
have sticks likewise, with which they strike the ground,
accompanying the blow with a motion of their whole bodies.
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