Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/49

Rh pean eyes, a Zulu clad in a skin kilt only, is so nearly naked as makes little if any difference; but were he to omit that minimum, he would be branded by his own people as a shameless fellow and no better than the beasts of the field. The requirements of modesty are especially strict between a man and his daughters-in-law. Should he be bathing in the river and see his son's wife, he calls out to warn her and ask her to look the other way till he is dressed. Should she see him first, she hides herself till he has gone away. Should they meet on the road, even if both are fully dressed, the woman will make a wide circuit to avoid him.

As she must not call him by his name, so, too, he must be careful to avoid calling her by the name of her girlhood, though it may be so familiar to him that he has to watch lest his tongue should slip into it in general conversation. Still less must he allow himself to address her as mfazi, "woman"—a word also used for " wife." This is an insult which provokes the retort, "Father, am I your wife or not?"—whereupon, "if he is a decent man (uma elungile), he says, "I have done wrong, my child," and at once pays a fine of a goat or a quantity of beads, "that the evil in the heart (i.e. the hurt feelings) may go no further." Should a man so far forget himself as to lift his hand to a daughter-in-law, she will take off her head-band and lay it on the ground, and then lay aside her petticoat, as a token that he has forfeited all claim to respect on her part. If he is not lost to all right feeling, this will overwhelm him with shame and contrition, so that he cannot rest till he has made atonement by a substantial fine.

This account says nothing about hlonipa between a man and his wife's mother; but no doubt the cases are parallel, though we might expect that different localities vary as to the degree of affinity on which most stress is laid. Thus the Baronga hlonipa more especially the