CHAP. XVI - MARRIAGE, BIRTH, SICKNESS AND DEATH

Summary

Marriage customs. Marriage among the Bagesu is a matter of expediency rather than of love, because children are the means of assisting the ghost after death; during life it is an investment, because a wife materially helps to make a man happy and comfortable and married life gives him a better position among his clansmen. There is no such thing as lovemaking before marriage and there is seldom a marriage from love. The man realises the advantages of married life with a family, and a woman gains by having a home of her own and loves to have children who look to her for sympathy and help during infancy and youth, who protect her when they attain to years of discretion, and provide for her in her old age. The man without doubt reaps greater benefits from marriage than the wife, but an unmarried and childless woman finds no place in social life among primitive people, for woman's principal function is child-bearing and in the second place that of making a home for some man. With the male section of a clan the marriage of a woman belonging to it is of importance because of the marriage fee they receive. There are no arrangements made for marriage between couples until adolescence and until after the initiation ceremonies have taken place; then it is a man seeks a wife. She must be from some clan other than his own, and he avoids women from his mother's clan.