Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/261

 of Contact ivitli Inanimate Objects. 249

are not chiefs simply run more or less boisterously into the house without any ceremony. In any case I do not feel very sure about it as my informant was not a chief, and another man with w'hom I discussed it said there was no such ceremony. Nevertheless, it is probably observed at times, as among the Mandingo, to whom the Mende are related, the bride rides from her own house to that of the bridegroom on the shoulders of one of the bridegroom's friends.

In British New Guinea there is a similar custom. On Goaribari Island the bride is brought from her house to the bridegroom's father's house standing on a piece of bark supported on an oblong piece of heavy wood, which is carried by means of transverse sticks by her relations- The lower board is left there, and the bark board is taken by the bride's brother to the married men's house, and all the small boys go there and shoot arrows into it. (H. J. Ryan, quoted by Haddon.) In this it must not be over- looked that importance attaches to the object on which the girl stood.

There is an amplification of this custom in Africa. Among the Nkundo of the Juapa River, commonly called the High Nkundo in distinction with those lower down the river when it joins the Congo, when a big chief's daughter is going to be married she is shut up in a hut for two months before the ceremony. This probation is called " Luburu." A fire is kept burning in the hut. When she goes outside for any purpose she must not walk on the ground. She must walk on " Mosolo," which is the name given to any article of value. So knives, anklets, bracelets, etc., I was informed, are laid on the ground, and on these she steps. Inside she is still supposed not to touch the ground, but sits with her feet resting on something. When the two months have expired she is carried through the town on a wooden bedstead by eight men, and dances all the time. The suitor then pays his headmoney and she is handed over.