United States or Papua New Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The marriage customs I shall pass over briefly, as they are similar to those of other tribes under the maternal system, though changes may be noted, such, for instance, as presents in the form of a kind of bride-price being given by the bridegroom to the parents of the bride.
Telemachus would give much to have her off his hands, but he refuses to send her to her father's house, where the old man might be ready enough to return the bride-price to her new husband, and get rid of her with honour. The Icelanders of the saga period gave dowries with their daughters.
Wherever we find the payment of a bride-price, in whatever form, there is sure indication of the decay of mother-right: woman has become property. Among the Bassa Komo of Nigeria marriage is usually effected by an exchange of sisters or other female relatives. The men may marry as many wives as they have women to give to other men.
It is by wit rather than by force that Swipdag is successful here. The third journey of Swipdag is undertaken on Frey's behalf; he goes under the name of Scirner to woo giant Gymer's daughter Gerth for his brother-in-law, buying her with the sword that he himself had paid to Frey as his sister's bride-price. So the sword gets back to the giants again.
Among the Wayao and Mang’anja of the Shirehighlands, south of Lake Nyassa, a man on marrying leaves his own village and goes to live in that of his wife; but, as an alternative, he is allowed to pay a bride-price, in which case he takes his wife away to his home.
The ring, indeed, probably was not in origin, as some have supposed, a mark of servitude, but rather a form of bride-price, or arrha, that is to say, earnest money on the contract of marriage and so the symbol of it.
With her I was reared, and she honoured me little less than her own. But when we both came to the time of our desire, to the flower of age, thereupon they sent her to Same, and got a great bride-price; but my lady clad me in a mantle and a doublet, raiment very fair, and gave me sandals for my feet and sent me forth to the field, and right dear at heart she held me.
Frazer cites an interesting example among the tribes on the north frontier of Abyssinia, partially Semitic peoples, not yet under the influence of Islam, who preserve a maternal marriage closely resembling the beena form, but have as well a purchase marriage, by which a wife is acquired by the payment of a bride-price and becomes the property of her husband. Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.
As I had grown older I had read the law, read of the birth of civilization, pondered on laws and customs. Declaring that I must know their reasons, I had read of marriages in many lands, and many times had studied into the questions of dowry and bride-price, and consent of parents, and consent of the bride studied marriage as a covenant, a contract, as a human and a so-called divine thing.
Thus no bride-price is claimed from the husband, who renders service in proof of his fitness as a lover, not to gain possession of the bride. The girl is frequently the wooer, and, in certain cases, she or her mother imposes the conditions of the marriage. There can, I think, be no doubt that this freedom in love was dependent on the wife’s position of security under the maternal form of marriage.