Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
Marriage being expensive amongst the "Mfumo" or gentry, the houses are stocked with Hagars, and the children inherit their father's rank as Mwana Mfumos, opposed to Mwanangambe, labouring people, or Wantu, slaves. The missionaries found a regular system of "hand-fasting."
"It would not have been altogether so rough a one," said the mosstrooper; "for my master was in heavy thought what to do in these unsettled times, and would scarce have hazarded misusing a man sent to him by so terrible a leader as the Lord James. But, to speak the truth, some busy devil tempted the old man to meddle with my master's Christian liberty of hand-fasting with Catherine of Newport.
While we were hand-fasting him, I felt his body to be feeble and emaciated; but yet I know him to be so puffed up with spiritual pride that I believe he weens every one of his actions justified before God, and, instead of having stings of conscience for these, he takes great merit to himself in having effected them.
Yet to deprive the father of them altogether is equally undesirable. The conjugal novitiate is not a new scheme. It was practised prior to the Reformation in Scotland under the name of ‘hand-fasting.’ The parties met at the annual fairs, and by the ceremony of joining hands declared themselves man and wife for a year.
It seems to be specially common in Teutonic and Celtic lands, and is known by various names, as Probenächte, fensterln, Kiltgang, hand-fasting, bundling, sitting-up, courting on the bed, etc.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking