Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/276

252 be most disrespectful. No; he gets up very early one morning and takes his father's cattle out to pasture without milking the cows, letting the calves run with their mothers and drink all the milk. No notice is taken of this, so he continues to act thus for thirty days. His boon companions desert him and nickname him "silly one." On the thirtieth day his father says, "Surely my son must want to get married." This remark is repeated to the son, and he ceases to deprive his family of milk, but on that day he must do all the milking unaided, and must convert the milk into butter, which his mother boils and puts into a new pot, and keeps to anoint the bridegroom's face. No questions are asked as to which dusky beauty the youth desires to marry. If the wife chosen by his father does not happen to be the lady of his heart, he is at liberty to choose a second wife for himself as soon as he is in a position to pay the dowry, or persuade his father to pay it for him, for when he is a married man he is on an equality with his father and can consult him as an equal.

After the episode of the cattle the youth's father will select a girl and go and talk over matters with her father. After they have agreed as to the number of cattle required for the dowry, a month is allowed to elapse at the end of which time the cattle are chosen, and the bridegroom's father prepares a small feast, the mother makes a large quantity of "leting" or mild beer, and all the friends and relations on his side regale themselves. The bridegroom then takes out the remaining cattle to pasture, while his father and male friends start off with the dowry. Before they come too near the bride's village they pick out two animals, a young bull and a heifer, to represent the bridegroom's