BURMESE GIRL.
To face p. [180].
The women of Burmah have unlimited freedom as compared with the women of other Eastern countries. Unlike the women of India, China, or Egypt, they may choose their own husbands and have a courtship such as we of the Western world so thoroughly understand. From the time of the first great event in a young girl’s life, the boring of her ears, which announces to her world that she is no longer a child but a woman, until her betrothal, the Burmese girl looks forward to the finding of a husband as the one aim of her life. Until her ears are bored she is a child and may run and play with her brothers upon the village street, but finally the day arrives when her friends and relatives bring with them the ear-borer and the soothsayer, and the frightened girl must pay the price of gaining maidenhood. Her cries are drowned by the music and the talk and laughter that seem so heartless; but the pain is soon over, and she herself will make the hole larger by every means in her power, because until the hole is large enough to receive the great round tube, nearly half an inch in diameter, she does not feel that she is indeed a woman. It is her initiation into womanhood, it corresponds to the entrance into the monastery or the tattooing of his legs of her brother, the sign that he is no longer a boy, but may sit with men and chew betel-nut and discuss affairs of the world with wondrous wisdom.
After the ear-boring ceremony each man our maiden sees may be a possible husband, and she copies the coquettish sway of the hips that is so effective in her older sister as she walks down the street with mother, aunt, or married friend, who carefully guards her from all improprieties now that she has arrived at marriageable age.
When all these arts have had the desired effect and her roving eye has alighted upon the man of her choice, the Burmese girl may have her days of courtship. She can meet her sweetheart at pwés, those festive parties that seem to occur every night in Burmah, at which she may have a stall for selling tobacco, or long cheroots, or flowers. This keeping of a stall is not lowering to a woman’s social status, and numbers of well-to-do women set them up at all places where crowds are liable to congregate. There may be a reason for this besides the economic one, as it is said a stall or shop or booth within the bazaar is the quickest way of attracting a desirable husband. In the smaller towns there is scarcely a house where the women have not arranged a small shop for sale of betel-nut, coco-nuts, little looking-glasses, toilet articles, or cotton goods from Manchester. The profits of this little trade are given as pin-money to the wife or daughters. The English say that the Burmese woman is a better businessman than her husband, and that in driving a sharp bargain her successes are far in advance of those of her less aggressive husband.
DANCING AT A VILLAGE FESTIVAL, BURMAH.
To face p. [183].
Pagoda feasts offer exceptional opportunities for lovelorn swains, and many young couples have found their future happiness when gazing into Buddha’s eyes. Evening-time is courting-time in all the world, especially in this country, which is too hot during the day to permit of any useless expenditure of energy, even by an ardent lover. They also say that the men of Burmah are influenced by the proverb that says: “In the morning women are cross and peevish, in the middle of the day they are testy and quarrelsome, but at night they are sweet and amiable.”
If the lover does not expect to meet his sweetheart at a festival or a theatrical entertainment, he waits around until he thinks the old people have retired for the night, and then with a friend or two as chaperons he calls upon his adored one, and finds her with powdered face and pretty dress awaiting him in the moonlit veranda. There is little privacy in this courtship, because divisions between the rooms are often only made of matting, and mothers in Burmah are proverbial for the quickness of hearing when it concerns the courtship of their daughters. There is no lovemaking as we know it—kissing, and holding of hands, and embracing—which would be most shocking to the modest instincts of the Burmese maiden. Yet love has signs, and finally father’s and mother’s consent is asked, the dowry fixed, and the astrologer consulted, who will tell them if a boy born on Monday and a girl on Wednesday may wed. No matter how ardently the match is desired by the interested parties, some unions, judged according to their birthdays, would be most unlucky. For example:—
Friday’s daughter