Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/286

270 Sāvi's husband must be caught, He must be caught, he must be beaten, He must be sent for a ride in the train. And put into the Sibi gaol. The barber must be sent for, His beard clipped and his hair shorn. And only his skin left him to rub. And then let him get a new wife!

This was no doubt composed when the railway to Sibi was first made and the gaol opened by the British Government. The unfortunate husband is to be entrapped and sent to prison, where he will have his hair cut off. It is a national custom among the Baloches never to cut hair or beard, except to trim the moustache as a sign of orthodoxy. (The Balochi's orthodoxy consists of little else!) It is a great disgrace to have the hair cut; so much so that in the Dera Ghazi Khan gaol the rule about cutting the hair is suspended in favour of Baloches, as it is in favour of Sikhs in other places.

Another little song, which is invariably greeted with great laughter, has for its burden—

Where the lady who wishes to meet her lover is trying to find an excuse for getting out of the house at night, and pretends that she has dropped her boy's cap, and must go out to look for it.

It need hardly be added that elopements are very frequent. The Baloch code of honour is very severe, and demands that the husband should kill his wife and her lover, and this he must do without waiting for proof, if it even comes to his knowledge that her name has ever been mentioned in connection with that of another man, in however casual a way. The consequence is that the woman and her lover always elope as soon as they can, and escape into the territory of another tribe or clan. If the lover belongs to this other clan his cause is espoused by his fellow-clansmen, and even if he does not belong to it, the laws of hospitality