LETTER XII - KAFIR WEDDINGS AND KAFIR KRAALS

Summary

Maritzburg, July 3.

I have seen two Kafir weddings lately, and oddly enough by the merest chance, within a day or two of each other. The two extremes of circumstance, the rudest barbarism and the culminating smartness of civilization, seemed to jostle each other before my very eyes as things do in a dream. And they went backwards too, to make it more perplexing, for it was the civilized wedding I saw first,—the wedding of people whose mothers had been bought for so many cows, and whose marriage rites had probably been celebrated with a stick, for your Kafir bridegroom does not understand coyness, and speedily ends the romance of courtship by a few timely cuffs.

Well then, I chanced to go into town one of these fine bright winter mornings (a morning which would be perfect if it were not for the dust), and I saw a crowd round the porch of the principal church. “What is going on?” I asked naturally, and heard in broken English, dashed with Dutch and Kafir, that there was an “untyado” (excuse phonetic spelling), or “bruit lag,” or “wedding.” Hardly had I gathered the meaning of all these words,—the English being by far the most difficult to recognise, for they put a click in it,—than the bridal party came out of church, formed themselves into an orderly procession, and commenced to walk up the exceedingly dusty street, two and two.