Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 51

Says Captain Mundy (II., 222):

"No aristocratic youth dare venture to pay his addresses to a Dyak demoiselle unless he throws at the blus.h.i.+ng maiden's feet a netful of skulls! In some districts it is customary for the young lady to desire her lover to cut a thick bamboo from the neighboring jungle, and when in possession of this instrument, she carefully arranges the _cadeau d'amour_ on the floor, and by repeated blows beats the heads into fragments, which, when thus pounded, are sc.r.a.ped up and cast into the river; at the same time she throws herself into the arms of the enraptured youth, and so commences the honeymoon."

Another account of Dyak courts.h.i.+p (Roth, II., 166) represents a young warrior returning from a head-hunting expedition and, on meeting his beloved, holding in each hand one of the captured heads by the hair.

She takes one of the heads, whereupon they dance round each other with the most extravagant gestures, amidst the applause of the Rajah and his people. The next step is a feast, at which the young couple eat together. When this is over, they have to take off whatever clothes they have on and sit naked on the ground while some of the old women throw over them handfuls of paddy and repeat a prayer that they may prove as fruitful as that grain.

"The warrior can take away any inferior man's wife at pleasure, and is thanked for so doing. A chief who has twenty heads in his possession will do the same with another who may have only ten, and upwards to the Rajah's family, who can take any woman at pleasure."

FICKLE AND SHALLOW Pa.s.sION

Though the Dyaks may be somewhat less coa.r.s.e than those Australians who make a captured woman marry the man who killed her husband, an almost equal callousness of feeling is revealed by J. Dalton's statement that the women taken on the head-hunting expedition "soon became attached to the conquerors"--resembling, in this respect, the Australian woman who, of her own accord, deserts to an enemy who has vanquished her husband. Cases of frantic amorous infatuation occur, as a matter of course. Brooke (II., 106) relates the story of a girl of seventeen who, for the sake of an ugly, deformed, and degraded workman, left her home, dressed as a man, and in a small broken canoe made a trip of eighty miles to join her lover. In olden times death would have been the penalty for such an act; but she, being a "New Woman" in her tribe, exclaimed, "If I fell in love with a wild beast, no one should prevent me marrying it." In this Eastern clime, Brooke declares, "love is like the sun's rays in warmth." He might have added that it is as fickle and transient as the sun's warmth; every pa.s.sing cloud chills it. The shallow nature of Dyak attachment is indicated by their ephemeral unions and universal addiction to divorce. "Among the Upper Sarawak Dyaks divorce is very frequent, owing to the great extent of adultery," says Haughton (Roth, I., 126); and St. John remarks:

"One can scarcely meet with a middle-aged Dayak who has not had two, and often three or more wives. I have heard of a girl of seventeen or eighteen years who had already had three husbands. Repudiation, which is generally done by the man or woman running away to the house of a near relation, takes place for the slightest cause--personal dislike or disappointments, a sudden quarrel, bad dreams, discontent with their partners'

powers of labor or their industry, or, in fact, any excuse which will help to give force to the expression, 'I do not want to live with him, or her, any longer.'"

"Many men and women have married seven or eight times before they find the partner with whom they desire to spend the rest of their lives."

"When a couple are newly-married, if a deer or a gazelle, or a moose-deer utters a cry at night near the house in which the pair are living, it is an omen of ill--they must separate, or the death of one would ensue. This might be a great trial to an European lover; the Dayaks, however, take the matter very philosophically."

"Mr. Chalmers mentions to me the case of a young Penin-jau man who was divorced from his wife on the third day after marriage. The previous night a deer had uttered its warning cry, and separate they must. The morning of the divorce he chanced to go into the 'Head House' and there sat the bridegroom contentedly at work."

"'Why are you here?' he was asked, as the 'Head House'

is frequented by bachelors and boys only; 'What news of your new wife?'"

"'I have no wife, we were separated this morning because the deer cried last night.'"

"'Are you sorry?'"

"'Very sorry.'"

"'What are you doing with that bra.s.s wire?'"

"'Making _perik_'--the bra.s.s chain work which the women wear round their waists--'for a young woman whom I want to get for my new wife,'" (I., 165-67; 55.)

Such is the love of Dyaks. Marriage among them, says the same keen observer, "is a business of partners.h.i.+p for the purpose of having children, dividing labor, and, by means of their offspring, providing for their old age;" and Brooke Low remarks that "intercourse before marriage is strictly to ascertain that the marriage will be fruitful, as the Dyaks want children," In other words, apart from sensual purposes, the women are not desired and cherished for their own sakes, but only for utilitarian reasons, as a means to an end. Whence we conclude that, high as the Dyaks stand above Australians and many Africans, they are still far from the goal of genuine affection. Their feelings are only skin deep.

DYAK LOVE-SONGS

Dyaks are not without their love-songs.

"I am the tender shoot of the drooping libau with its fragrant scent." "I am the comb of the champion fighting-c.o.c.k that never runs away," "I am the hawk flying down the Kanyau Kiver, coming after the fine feathered fowl." "I am the crocodile from the mouth of the Lingga, coming repeatedly for the striped flower of the rose-apple."

Roth (I., 119-21) cites forty-five of these verses, mostly expressive of such selfish boasting and vanity. Not one of them expresses a feeling of tenderness or admiration of a beloved person, not to speak of altruistic feelings.

THE GIRL WITH THE CLEAN FACE

Is a Dyak capable of admiring personal beauty? Some of the girls have fine figures and pretty faces; but there is no evidence that any but the voluptuous (non-esthetic) qualities of the figure are appreciated, and as for the faces, if the men really appreciated beauty as we do, they would first of all things insist that the girls must keep their faces clean. An amusing experiment made by St. John with some Ida'an girls (I., 339) is suggestive from this point of view:

"We selected one who had the dirtiest face--and it was difficult to select where all were dirty--and asked her to glance at herself in a looking-gla.s.s. She did so, and pa.s.sed it round to the others; we then asked which they thought looked best, cleanliness or dirt: this was received with a universal giggle.

"We had brought with us several dozen cheap looking-gla.s.ses, so we told Iseiom, the daughter of Li Moung, our host, that if she would go and wash her face we would give her one. She treated the offer with scorn, tossed her head, and went into her father's room. But about half an hour afterwards, we saw her come into the house and try to mix quietly with the crowd; but it was of no use, her companions soon noticed she had a clean face, and pushed her to the front to be inspected. She blus.h.i.+ngly received her looking-gla.s.s and ran away, amid the laughter of the crowd."

The example had a great effect, however, and before evening nine of the girls had received looking-gla.s.ses.[184]

FIJIAN REFINEMENTS

In the chapter on Personal Beauty I endeavored to show that if savages who live near the sea or river are clean, it is not owing to their love of cleanliness, but to an accident, bathing being resorted to by them as an antidote to heat, or as a sport. This applies particularly to the Melanesian and Polynesian inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, whose chief pastimes are swimming and surf riding. Thomas Williams, in his authoritative work on Fiji and the Fijians, makes some remarks which entirely bear out my views:

"Too much has been said about the cleanliness of the natives. The lower cla.s.ses are often very dirty.... They ...

seldom hesitate to sink both cleanliness and dignity in what they call comfort" (117).

We are therefore not surprised to read on another page (97) that

"of admiring emotion, produced by the contemplation of beauty, these people seem incapable; while they remain unmoved by the wondrous loveliness with which they are everywhere surrounded.... The mind of the Fijian has. .h.i.therto seemed utterly unconscious of any inspiration of beauty, and his imagination has grovelled in the most vulgar earthliness."

Sentimentalists have therefore erred in ascribing to the Fijian cannibals cleanliness as a virtue. They have erred also in regard to several other alleged refinements they discovered among these tribes.

One of these is the custom prohibiting a father from cohabiting with his wife until the child is weaned. This has been supposed to indicate a kind regard for the welfare and health of mother and child. But when we examine the facts we find that far from being a proof of superior morality, this custom reveals the immorality of the husband, and makes an a.s.sa.s.sin of the wife. Read what Williams has to say (154):

"Nandi, one of whose wives was pregnant, left her to dwell with a second. The forsaken one awaited his return some months, and at last the child disappeared.

This practice seemed to be universal on Vanua Levu--quite a matter of course--so that few women could be found who had not in some way been murderers. The extent of infanticide in some parts of this island reaches nearer to two-thirds than half."

Williams further informs us (117) that "husbands are as frequently away from their wives as they are with them, since it is thought not well for a man to sleep regularly at home." He does not comment on this, but Seeman (191) and Westermarck (151) interpret the custom as indicating Fijian "ideas of delicacy in married life," which, after what has just been said, is decidedly amusing. If Fijians really were capable of considering it indelicate to spend the night under the same roof with their wives, it would indicate their indelicacy, not their delicacy. The utterly unprincipled men doubtless had their reasons for preferring to stay away from home, and probably their great contempt for women also had something to do with the custom.

HOW CANNIBALS TREAT WOMEN

In Fiji, says Crawley (225), women are kept away from partic.i.p.ation in wors.h.i.+p. "Dogs are excluded from some temples, women from all." In many parts of the group woman is treated, according to Williams,

"as a beast of burden, not exempt from any kind of labor, and forbidden to enter any temple; certain kinds of food she may eat only by sufferance, and that after her husband has finished. In youth she is the victim of l.u.s.t, and in old age, of brutality."

Girls are betrothed and married as children without consulting their choice. "I have seen an old man of sixty living with two wives both under fifteen years of age." Such of the young women as are acquainted with foreign ways envy the favored women who wed "the man to whom their spirit flies." Women are regarded as the property of the men, and as an incentive to bravery they are "promised to such as shall, by their prowess, render themselves deserving." They are used for paying war-debts and other accounts; for instance, "the people submitted to their chiefs and capitulated, offering two women, a basket of earth, whales' teeth, and mats, to buy the reconciliation of the Rewans."

"A chief of Nandy, in Viti Levu, was very desirous to have a musket which an American captain had shown him.

The price of the coveted piece was two hogs. The chief had only one; but he sent on board with it a young woman as an equivalent."

At weddings the prayer is that the bride may "bring forth male children"; and when the son is born, one of the first lessons taught him is "to strike his mother, lest he should grow up to be a coward."

When a husband died, it was the national custom to murder his wife, often his mother too, to be his companions. To kill a defenceless woman was an honorable deed.

"I once asked a man why he was called Koroi. 'Because,' he replied, 'I, with several other men, found some women and children in a cave, drew them out and clubbed them and was then consecrated.'"

So far have sympathy and gallantry progressed in Fiji.

"Many examples might be given of most dastardly cruelty, where women and even unoffending children were abominably slain." "I have labored to make the murderers of females ashamed of themselves; and have heard their cowardly cruelty defended by the a.s.sertion that such victims were doubly good--because they ate well, and because of the distress it caused their husbands and friends."

"Cannibalism does not confine itself to one s.e.x." "The heart, the thigh, and the arm above the elbow, are considered the greatest dainties."