Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/347

 The ranks now break up for a moment. The people of the bride's gampōng go through the polite form of offering the guests sirih and betel-nut, and in the meantime they greet one another in more familiar fashion and speak the language of ordinary mortals. When this interval has lasted long enough the files close up again. The colloquy that now begins consists practually in a series of pressing invitations to come in ("come up", the Achehnese says, since his house stands on posts), and polite excuses on the part of the guests, who declare themselves content with their place in the front part of the enclosure. All this politeness is for the most part expressed in the form of pantōns. The Achehnese pantōns have this in common with the Malay, that the first two lines are not in any way connected in point of sense with the second pair, but serve chiefly to supply rhyming words. For an Achehnese who has some knowledge of the pantōns most commonly used, the repetition of the first strophe at once suggests the meaning of that which succeeds it. The verses of the Achehnese pantōns are also generally in sanjaʾ, that is to say, each consists of four parts of which the two middle ones rhyme with each other, while the last word of each verse rhymes with the last word of the next.

Let us now see how the reciters help to shorten the evening of the wedding; we shall call the elder of the bride’s party A and the elder of the bridegroom's gampōng B.

A. Well then o Teuku! I have something more to tell thee, even as the elders are wont to say:

A dove flies afar.

A young quail twists in its flight.

I offer you sirth, Teuku, pray accept it,

Now may I proceed to disclose to you what is in my heart.

B. A pěrkutut’s cage in a garden of flowers,

A casting-net in a bamboo case.

It is no harm that you should disclose it,

I am willing to hear that which ts in your heart.

A. A mountain-bird with red feet,