Page:The Euahlayi Tribe.djvu/95

58 When the women there saw her coming they began to sing a song in, to her, a strange language.

On a log, with his back towards her—for he must not yet look on her face—sat the man to whom she was betrothed. The girl went up to him. As the women chanted louder she threw the smoking Budtha twigs away, placed a hand on each of his shoulders and shook him. Then she turned and ran back to her new camp, the women singing and pelting her with dry twigs and small sticks as she went. For another moon she stayed with her granny in this camp, then the women made her another one nearer.

In a few weeks they made her one on the outskirts of the main camp. Here she stayed until they made her another in the camp, but a little apart. In front of the opening of this dardurr they made a fire. That night her betrothed camped on one side of this fire and she on the other. For a moon they camped so. Then the old granny told the girl she must camp on the same side of the fire as her betrothed, and as long as she lived be his faithful and obedient wife, having no thought of other men. Should he ill-treat her, her relations had the power to take her from him. Or should he for some reason, after a while, not care for her, he can send her back to her people; should she have a child he leaves it with her until old enough to camp away from her, when it is returned to him.

The wedding presents are not given to the bride and bridegroom, but by the latter to his mother-in-law, to whom, however, he is never allowed to speak. Failing a mother-in-law, the presents are given to the nearest of kin to the wife. You can hardly reckon it as purchase money, for sometimes a man gives no presents and yet gets a wife.

In books about blacks, you always read of the subjection of the women, but I have seen henpecked black husbands.

There are two codes of morals, one for men and one for