Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/132

 part of the established military ritual. Similarly, the Malayan custom which compels a youth, who has killed his first man, to lick the blood from his kris blade, or it may be even to swallow a tiny piece of flesh cut from the neighbourhood of his victim's heart, indicates that cannibalism was once an approved feature of war as waged by the Malays. In the same way, the sham fight which, among these people, marks the arrival of a bridegroom, bears witness to a time when marriage by capture was at once a stern reality, and the only honourable way in which a bride might be won. The antagonism of the male members of a family to the man who desires to possess himself of their daughter or sister is a strong, natural instinct, and it is easy to understand that, long after forcible abduction had ceased to be a reality, self-respect demanded that some show of resistance should be offered before the detested intruder was suffered to lead his wife away. In some of the wilder and more remote parts of the Malay Peninsula the aboriginal Sâkai still place a girl on an ant-hill, and ring her about by a mob of her male relations, who do not allow her suitor to approach her until his head has been broken in several places. Who can doubt that the adoption of a similar practice in England would find much favour with many schoolboy brothers, if it could be made a customary feature of their sisters' marriage ceremonies?

The bride, as has been said, had been left in the inner apartment, there to await her call to the dais: and the preparations were in full swing—the men