Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/250

238 dried fish, or in salt. Betrothals may take place at a very early age—sometimes before the girl is born, or even when there is no present prospect of a girl.

The bride-seeker, starting on his quest, pays great attention to his dreams. If they are of fire or flood, the matter has a dubious aspect, and he usually gives it up; but to dream of clear water or of receiving money is a good sign. The girl is not consulted, and all is arranged by intermediaries, without the parties seeing one another. A few days previous to the wedding the bride goes round and takes leave of her relatives, with lamentations that she is to be consigned to strangers—for marriages are always between persons of different clans—and receives their wedding-gifts. Then, just in time to be at the wedding, the people of the groom's village march to the bride's village with drum and song, and parade the streets, brandishing their drawn knives and shouting, till a wild dance is started, which passes into a long, serpentine movement with windings and inwindings, and the chanting of a recitative by one of the participants, and the repetition in chorus of the last strophe, or its final sound, which is always a vowel. There is nothing like singing in this, for musical song is not known in Nias. The women dance in pairs, deliberately and gracefully waving the ends of the scarfs which are hung upon their necks. A breakfast follows, and a more elaborate dinner in the evening.

The bride sits through these proceedings with downcast eyes, wearing an air of modest reserve. Previous to her leaving the house, she must be paid for; and then she will not go, and has to be taken out. When she has been successfully brought down the ladder, the groom is called and saunters out from the throng like one of the most indifferent persons in it. Then the heads of the pair are made to touch at the foot of an idol-post which has been planted in front of the house, usually against the resistance of the bride, and they are a married couple. The groom rubs the bride's lips with a certain leaf, telling her she must not be obstinate, and she is led away—for she will not go of herself—between two women.

On arriving at the groom's residence, a kerchief is thrown over the heads of the couple, and the chief gives them his blessing by waving his sword over them. The bride is taken into the house without her taking hold of the ladder—for the rafters are the first thing to be touched by her—and, when she is seated, a boy is placed upon her lap, in token of her becoming a servant, after which she gives betel to her husband.

The groom or his father gives a feast in his turn, at which a consultation of entrails is held after the old Roman fashion, to determine what the character of the bride's life will be. She