Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/479

 the Western Border of India. 443

Sikh had connections on the cattle-passing side, she was disposed of to a yeoman farmer in what the latter took to be lawful wedlock. Twenty pounds formed the pleasant sum which the Sikh took back with him. The farmer decked his spouse out with the ornaments and finery befitting her station, and she lived happily with him for some months. She appears, however, to have kept up correspondence with her friends, and it happened that another Jat Sikh from her part of the world, travelling with a Sweeper girl, from whom he also was prepared to part if inducements offered, brought a message to the cattle thief aforesaid. This message ran, — " Please give to bearer the article in deposit with you." The deposit not being there, he was sent on to the farmer's house, where he and his lady friend passed themselves off as friends of the housewife. They were received hospitably, and entertained for two days. The third day is proverbially the day for guests to depart, and they did so, but in the night and taking the woman with them. She also took with her the nice ornaments given by the farmer. The latter was a man of substance, and on discovering his loss pursued hotly. The deceitful fair was tracked from place to place, until she was found in the Central Punjab happy and contented in the house of one of her own butcher caste, not her original husband. The proverb goes, " Like mates with like, the hawk with the hawk, the pigeon with the pigeon," and the stoutest farmer is not to the butcher's daughter the same as a butcher of sheep and goats. Nothing is more curious here than the quiet manner of acquiescence in the inevitable, and she returned without demur to the man who, she admitted, had the best right to her.

Now, here we have a case in which the executive officer and the police authorities would clearly demand that several persons should end in jail as a result of their nefarious actions. What offences, however, will the lawyers admit to have occurred .-^ The original Jat Sikh might have been