Part 49 (2/2)
Gerstaecker, a German traveller, who traversed a part of Australia, has a tale of aboriginal love which also bears the earmarks of fiction. On his whole trip, he says, in his 514-page volume devoted to Australia, he heard of only one case of genuine love. A young man of the Bamares tribe took a fancy to a girl of the Rengmutkos. She was also pleased with him and he eloped with her at night, taking her to his hunting-ground on the river. The tribe heard of his escapade and ordered him to return the girl to her home. He obeyed, but two weeks later eloped with her again. He was reprimanded and informed that if it happened again he would be killed. For the present he escaped punishment personally, but was ordered to cudgel the girl and then send her back home. He obeyed again; the girl fell down before him and he rained hard blows on her head and shoulders till the elders themselves interceded and cried enough. The girl was chased away and the lover remained alone. For two days he refused to join in the hunting or diversions of his companions. On the third day he ascended an eminence whence the Murray Valley can be seen. In the distance he saw two columns of smoke; they had been maintained for him all this time by his girl. He took his spear and opossum coat and hastened toward the columns of smoke. He was about to commit his third offence, which meant certain death, yet on he went and found the girl. Her wounds were not yet healed, but she hastened to meet him and put her head on his bosom.
This tale is open to the same criticism as Lumholtz's. The man risks his life, not for another, but to secure what he covets. It is a romantic love-story, but there is no indication anywhere of romantic love, while some of the details are fict.i.tiously embellished. An Australian girl does not put her head on her lover's bosom, nor could she camp alone and keep up two columns of smoke for several days without being discovered and kidnapped. The story is evidently one of an ordinary elopement, embellished by European fancy.[180]
LOCAL COLOR IN COURTs.h.i.+P
There is some quaint local color in Australian courts.h.i.+p, but usually blows play too important a role to make their procedure acceptable to anyone with a less waddy-proof skull than an Australian. Spencer and Gillen relate (556) that in cases of charming, the initiative is sometimes taken by the woman,
”who can, of course, imagine that she has been charmed, and then find a willing aider and abettor in the man whose vanity is flattered by this response to his magic power, which he can soon persuade himself that he did really exercise; besides which, an extra wife has its advantages in the way of procuring food and saving him trouble, while, if his other women object, the matter is one which does not hurt him, for it can easily be settled once and for all by a stand-up fight between the women and the rout of the loser.”
Quaintly Australian are the following details of Kurnai courts.h.i.+p given by Howitt:
”Sometimes it might happen that the young men were backward. Perhaps there might be several young girls who ought to be married, and the women had then to take the matter in hand when some eligible young men were at camp. They consulted, and some went out in the forest and with sticks killed some of the little birds, the yeerung. These they brought back to the camp and casually showed them to some of the men; then there was an uproar. The men were very angry. The yeerungs, their brothers, had been killed! The young men got sticks; the girls took sticks also, and they attacked each other. Heavy blows were struck, heads were broken, and blood flowed, but no one stopped them.
”Perhaps this light might last a quarter of an hour, then they separated. Some even might be left on the ground insensible. Even the men and women who were married joined in the free fight. The next day the young men, the brewit, went, and in their turn killed some of the women's 'sisters,' the birds djeetgun, and the consequence was that on the following day there was a worse fight than before. It was perhaps a week or two before the wounds and bruises were healed. By and by, some day one of the eligible young men met one of the marriageable young women; he looked at her, and said 'Djeetgun!' She said 'Yeerung! What does the yeerung eat?' The reply was, 'He eats so-and-so,' mentioning kangaroo, opossum, or emu, or some other game. Then they laughed, and she ran off with him without telling anyone.”
LOVE-LETTERS
Apart from magic and birds Australian lovers appear not to have been without means of communicating with one another. Howitt says that if a Kurnai girl took a fancy to a man she might send him a secret message asking, ”Will you find me some food?” And this was understood to be a proposal--a rather unsentimental and utilitarian proposal, it must be confessed. According to one of the correspondents of Curr (III., 176) the natives along the Mary River even made use of a kind of love-letters which, he says, ”were peculiar.”
”When the writer was once travelling with a black boy the latter produced from the lining of his hat a bit of twig about an inch long and having three notches cut on it. The black boy explained that he was a _dhomka_ (messenger), that the central notch represented himself, and the other notches, one the youth sending the message, the other the girl for whom it was intended. It meant, in the words of d.i.c.kens, 'Barkis is willin'.' The _dhomka_ sewed up the love-symbol in the lining of his hat, carried it for months without divulging his secret to his sable friends, and finally delivered it safely. This practice appeared to be well-known, and was probably common.”
Such a ”love-letter,” consisting of three notches cut in a twig, symbolically sums up this whole chapter. The difference between this bushman's twig and the love-letter of a civilized modern suitor is no greater than the difference between aboriginal Australian ”love” and genuine romantic love.
ISLAND LOVE ON THE PACIFIC
Between the northern extremity of Australia and the southern extremity of New Guinea, about ninety miles wide, lies Torres Strait, discovered by a Spaniard in 1606, and not visited again by whites till Captain Cook sailed through in 1770. This strait has been called a ”labyrinth of islands, rocks, and coral reefs,” so complicated and dangerous that Torres, the original discoverer, required two months to get through.
WHERE WOMEN PROPOSE
The larger islands in this strait are of special interest to students of the phenomena of love and marriage, for on them it is not only permissible but obligatory for women to propose to the men. Needless to say that the inhabitants of these islands, though so near Queensland, are not Australians. They are Melanesians, but their customs are insular and unique. Curr (I., 279) says of them that they are ”with one exception, of the Papuan type, frizzle-haired people who cultivate the soil, use the bow and arrow and not the spear, and, un-Australian-like, treat their women with some consideration.”
Luckily the customs of these islanders have been carefully and intelligently studied by Professor A.C. Haddon, who published an entertaining account of them in a periodical to which one usually looks for instruction rather than amus.e.m.e.nt.[181] Professor Haddon combines the two. On the island of Tud, he tells us, when boys undergo the ordeal of initiation into manhood, one of the lessons taught them is: ”You no like girl first; if you do, girl laugh and call you woman.” When a girl likes a man, she tells his sister and gives her a ring of string. On the first suitable opportunity the sister says to her brother: ”Brother, I have some good news for you. A woman loves you.” He asks who it is, and, if willing to go on with the affair, tells his sister to ask the girl to keep an appointment with him in some spot in the bush. On receipt of the message the enamoured girl informs her parents that she is going into the bush to get some wood, or food, or some such excuse. At the appointed time the man meets her; and they sit down and yarn, without any fondling. The ensuing dialogue is given by Haddon in the actual words which Maino, chief of Tud, used:
”Opening the conversation, the man says, 'You like me proper?'
”'Yes,' she replies, 'I like you proper with my heart inside. Eye along my heart see you--you my man.'
”Unwilling to rashly give himself away, he asks,'How you like me?'
”'I like your leg--you got fine body--your skin good--I like you altogether,' replies the girl.
”After matters have proceeded satisfactorily the girl, anxious to clench the matter, asks when they are to be married. The man says, 'To-morrow, if you like.'
”Then they go home and inform their relatives. There is a mock fight and everything is settled.”
<script>