Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/128

 120 the girl's father is settled; it is seldom less than $100, and sometimes amounts to $700 or $800.

These arrangements being concluded, the proposer is entitled (on payment of $5 each time) to private interviews with his fiancée, to enable him by a closer inspection to judge better of her personal charms. But it frequently happens that the man squanders all his money on these "interviews" before paying the dafa agreed upon. The girl then (at her parents' instigation) breaks off the match, and her father, when expostulated with, replies that he will not force his daughter's inclinations.

Hence arise innumerable breach of promise of marriage suits, in which the man is invariably the plaintiff.

I have known instances of a girl being betrothed to three or four different men in about a year's time, the father receiving a certain amount of dafa from each suitor. But I am now supposing that the course of love has run smoothly, and the marriage takes place as originally arranged.

Before all things it is necessary for the bridegroom to provide a perfectly new 'árish, or hut, for the accommodation of his bride. If the bridegroom is a popular man the erection of the hut costs him little beyond the actual price of the materials used, as his friends volunteer their services in constructing it. The bridegroom regales them with coffee (or rather a concoction of coffee-husks) and tobacco prepared for chewing. They sing merrily over their work; and, as they place the thatch on the roof, compose impromptu verses containing witty and flattering allusions to the happy couple about to occupy the hut. The bride's relatives supply coloured mats for lining the inside of the hut, and also supply a few household utensils. The bride always makes with her own hands a handsome coloured sleeping-mat to cover the nuptial couch.

Dancing and singing, accompanied by hand-clapping in lieu of musical instruments, is kept up at the bridegroom's house for about a fortnight.

On the day fixed for the removal of the bride to her new home she is escorted to it from her father's house by a large party of young men and maidens, the latter dressed in their best clothes, and having