Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/359

 bride is led in, still in full dress. Once more she makes a deep obeisance before her husband, after which he gives her a small money present—say a dollar.

A repast in the form of an idang is thereupon brought into the jurèë but as a rule remains almost untouched. As soon as it has been removed the bride retires to the back among the women, while the bridegroom joins the male guests and the fellow-villagers of the bride in the front verandah.

Meantime they both change their heavy clothing for the simpler garments in which the Achehnese are wont to sleep, for the social concourse in the verandahs soon ceases, and the leading peunganjō comes to summon the bridegroom. She leads him into the jurèë and up to the curtained bed. Here another peunganjō (of the bride's party) hastens to unroll the sleeping-mat, which has up till now purposely been left rolled up on the mattress (tilam éh), to give the aged dame the chance of earning her dollar "for the unrolling of the mat". The bride is now constrained, not without a considerable amount of scolding and persuasion on the part of her mother and the peunganjōs, to enter the room and join her husband. One or two peunganjōs keep watch in the jurèë, in order now and then by a friendly word to encourage the pair to greater mutual confidence. They try especially to induce the bride and bridegroom to lie with their faces turned towards one another, though in Acheh they do not go as far as in Java, where the desired position is sometimes effected by the assistance of old women, friends of the newly-married couple.

The 3$d$, 5$th$, 7$th$, 10$th$, 40$th$, 44$th$, 50$th$, 100$th$ and 1000$th$ days after birth, marriage or death are regarded throughout the Eastern Archipelago as epochs of importance, and are always marked by some ceremonial observance.

In Acheh the first three are those most strictly observed after a wedding. On the third, fifth and seventh days after marriage, the family of the bride offers the bridegroom and his peunganjōs a formal feast such as that described above.

The whole of the first seven days are however more or less festal