He May Whack With Impunity So Long As He
Does Not Draw Blood; If He Does, Be It Never So
Little, his wife is
off to her relations, the present he has given for her is returned,
the marriage is
Annulled, and she can re-marry as soon as she is
able.
Her relations are only too glad to get her, because, although the
present has to be returned, yet the propitiatory offerings remain
theirs, and they know more propitiatory offerings as well as another
present will accrue with the next set of suitors. This of course is
only the case with the younger women; the older women for one thing
do not nag so much, and moreover they have usually children willing
and able to support them. 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.
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