Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/207

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS festivities, and misfortune will come of it. That is the belief of the people. Its origin I do not know.

A friend of ours says rightly that the Javanese are a people who are filled with legends and superstitions. Who shall lead the people out of the dusky realm of fairy tales into the light of work and reality? And then, when superstition is cast off, we do not want the poetry to be trampled under foot.

But of what good is my prattling Let me rather ask you if you have been interested in this epistle, and if you will now forgive me for my long silence?

There is so much that is lovable in my people, such charm in their simple na'ive beliefs. It may sound strange, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that you Europeans have taught me to love my own land and people. Instead of estranging us from our native land, our European education has brought us nearer to it; has opened our hearts to its beauties, and also to the needs of our people and to their weaknesses.

Do not let me tire you any longer with the scribbling of a silly Javanese girl; I have written enough.

(Postscript)

In some places it is the custom when the bridal pair meet for the first time for the bride to wash the groom's feet as a token of submission before she gives him the knee-kiss. Whenever a widower marries a young girl, or a widow a young man, the giving of the sirrih at the wedding is omitted. The one who has already been married hands the other, who carries a watering-can, a piece of burning wood, the contents of the can are poured upon the fire, which naturally goes out; whereupon the charred wood is thrown away and the watering-can broken into pieces.

The symbolism of this I do not have to explain. It is plain enough. —185—