If They Have Not, Their State Is, Like
That Of All Old Childless Women In Africa, A Very Desolate One.
Infant marriage is now in vogue among the Igalwa, and to my surprise
I find it is of quite recent introduction and adoption.
Their own
account of this retrograde movement in culture is that in the last
generation - some of the old people indeed claim to have known him -
there was an exceedingly ugly and deformed man who could not get a
wife, the women being then, as the men are now, great admirers of
physical beauty. So this man, being very cunning, hit on the idea
of becoming betrothed to one before she could exercise her own
choice in the matter; and knowing a family in which an interesting
event was likely to occur, he made heavy presents in the proper
quarters and bespoke the coming infant if it should be a girl. A
girl it was, and thus, say the Igalwa, arose the custom; and
nowadays, although they do not engage their wives so early as did
the founder of the custom, they adopt infant marriage as an
institution.
I inquired carefully, in the interests of ethnology, as to what
methods of courting were in vogue previously. They said people
married each other because they loved each other. I hope other
ethnologists will follow this inquiry up, for we may here find a
real golden age, which in other races of humanity lies away in the
mists of the ages behind the kitchen middens and the Cambrian rocks.
My own opinion in this matter is that the earlier courting methods
of the Igalwa involved a certain amount of effort on the man's part,
a thing abhorrent to an Igalwa. It necessitated his dressing
himself up, and likely enough fighting that impudent scoundrel who
was engaged in courting her too; and above all serenading her at
night on the native harp, with its strings made from the tendrils of
a certain orchid, or on the marimba, amongst crowds of mosquitoes.
Any institution that involved being out at night amongst crowds of
those Lembarene mosquitoes would have to disappear, let that
institution be what it might.
The Igalwa are one of the dying-out coast tribes. As well as on
Lembarene Island, their villages are scattered along the banks of
the Lower Ogowe, and on the shores and islands of Eliva Z'Onlange.
On the island they are, so far, undisturbed by the Fan invasion, and
laze their lives away like lotus-eaters. Their slaves work their
large plantations, and bring up to them magnificent yams, ready
prepared ogooma, sweet-potatoes, papaw, etc., not forgetting that
delicacy Odeaka cheese; this is not an exclusive inspiration of
theirs, for the M'pongwe and the Benga use it as well. It is made
from the kernel of the wild mango, a singularly beautiful tree of
great size and stately spread of foliage. I can compare it only in
appearance and habit of growth to our Irish, or evergreen, oak, but
it is an idealisation of that fine tree.
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