Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/472

 436 Some Matrimonial Problems of

family took alarm at the possibility of property belonging to the tribe going elsewhere when these girls married, and it was decided that they were to have freedom of choice and marry whom they thought best, but that they must marry within their own family. In the end there does not seem to have been very much choice, for we read that " Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married unto their father's brother's sons, . . . and their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of their father." This instance is constantly paralleled in the districts to which I refer. Many tribesmen, as is natural with people who hold that women are themselves a form of property, refuse to admit that women can themselves hold property, and others, while permitting a widow to retain her husband's share, or daughters to hold to their father's inheritance like the daughters of Zelophehad, take it away from them promptly on marriage or re-marriage.

These follow their own customs, though nominally Muhammedans in other respects. But others have been prevailed upon to stick to the law of their own religion, and with them women have the rights of inheritance in varying proportion. Here again, as in the case of the family of Gilead, this leads to male relatives resenting the chance of the land going elsewhere, and curing the difficulty by marrying their near relations themselves. This practice, as I have already said, is also due to the fact that cousins have to pay a less sum, or nothing, to the guardians of the girls. But difficulties arise in this apparently straightforward matter. Young ladies left orphans frequently have many relations, and it is difficult for them, if of more or less the same status, to adjust the matter between them. In the case of horses or cows settlement may be arrived at by each owning a leg or two in proportion to their rights, which means that each keeps the animal for a greater or less period, but the tribesmen to whom I refer at least have the virtue of objecting to polyandry. So troubles arise in this