Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/332

 294 Marriage Customs of the Bedu and Fellahin.

mutton and rice, is eaten during the whole week. On the evening of the sixth day the father of the young wife sends her a present known as " es-suhber It consists of a kid or lamb divided into pieces, each upon a separate tabak or straw dish ; also bowls of uncooked rice, and of semn or fat for cooking. These are covered with red gauze. He sends also a wadded jacket, a woman's ^abbai or mantle, three or four tydb (dress lengths) of red or blue cotton, and some head-coverings. These are brought by the female relatives with song and dance, generally taking a long way round by way of announcing the festal occasion. Then there is supper for all, and in Christian villages much drinking, and, at a later hour, friends of the bridegroom will bring presents, generally of a domestic nature, such as dried figs, raisins, dibs or grape-honey, coffee, and the like. These are known as inkoot-es-sdbi'^-, or presents of the seventh.

These may amount, in all, to three or four hundred piastres (fifty, sixty, or seventy shillings), and in rich districts even to one thousand piastres.

On the seventh day the young wife leaves the house for the first time. When the pair pass the house of a friend, he will rush out and strew their path with sweet things, raisins or figs. An enemy takes the same occasion to express his sentiments in less savoury fashion.

Most of these customs obtain whether the happy pair be Christian or Moslem. There are, of course, variants. 'J he bride, if of the Latin Church, will wear a crown of flowers on her wedding day ; if of the Greek Church, both wear crowns of gilt. These are put on in church. Modern converts learn to despise the customs of their race, wear caricatures of European clothing, and celebrate the occa- sion in travesty of P2uropean manners. They do not come within the sphere of our present discussion.

The married life of the Fellaha is not so secure and happy as that of her Bedawi sister. Her marriage is less often a matter of choice, and in the lack of tribal feeling she