The sheaves are laid in the hollowed-out tree-trunk which serves as a kind of mortar, and the women, bringing down the long wooden pestles in a rhythmic cadence husk the rice. And this is the end of the Pari Penganten.
"Humbly kneeling down, the bride proceeded to wash the bridegroom's feet, in token of loving submission."
But, as the proverb has it, "of a wedding comes a wedding" and this mystic marriage of the rice invariably proves the prelude to marriages among the young folk of the dessa, who have met and wooed and won one another during the long days of common work and play in the ripe rice-field. During our stay on the Tjeremai hill-side we had occasion to convince ourselves of this. The Pari Penganten was but just over when we arrived; and already several marriages were being arranged in the dessa, among the number that of the headman's pretty daughter to a good-looking youth, her remote cousin.
Bride and bridegroom sitting in state.
As a preliminary the village scholar had been consulted as to the young couple's chances of happiness; and he having declared the cabalistic meaning of their united initials to be "a broadly-branching waringin-tree" which is the symbol of health, riches and a numerous progeny, the parents, reassured as to the future of their children, had begun negotiations about the dowry. This, it should be noted, is given by the family of the future husband.
The wedding-guests on their procession through the village.