"The sentiment of tender and chaste love is as unknown to the Kaffir as that respect which is founded on agreement and moral worth. The need of mutual aid in domestic life, combined with the natural instinct for the propagation of the species, alone seem to occasion a union of young men and women which afterward gains permanence through habitual intercourse and a community of interests."
"It is true that the young man commonly seeks to gain the favor of the girl he likes before he applies to her parents, in which case, if his suit is accepted, the supreme favor is at once granted him by the girl; but inasmuch as he does not need her good will necessarily, the parental consent being sufficient to secure possession of her, he shows little zeal, and his peace of mind is not in the least disturbed by a possible refusal. Altogether, he is much less solicitous about gaining her predilection than about getting her for the lowest possible price."
Alberti was evidently a thinker as well as a careful observer. His lucid remarks gives us a deep insight into primitive conditions when love had hardly yet begun to germinate. What a worldwide difference between this languid Kaffir wooer, hardly caring whether he gets this girl or another, and the modern lover who thinks life not worth living, unless he can gain the love of his chosen one. In all the literature on the subject, I have been able to find only one case of stubborn preference among Kaffirs. Neuhaus knew a young man who refused for two years to marry the girl chosen for him by his father, and finally succeeded in having his way with another girl whom he preferred. As a matter of course, strong aversion is more frequently manifested than decided preference, especially in the case of girls who are compelled to marry old men. Neuhaus[142] saw a Zulu girl whose hands had been nearly burned off by her tormentors; he knew of two girls who committed suicide, one just before, the other just after, an enforced marriage. Grout (167) speaks of the "various kinds of torture resorted to by the father and friends of a girl to compel her to marry contrary to her choice." One girl, who had fled to his house for refuge, told him repeatedly that if delivered into the hands of her tormentors "she would be cruelly beaten as soon as they were out of sight and be subjected to every possible abuse, till she should comply with the wishes of her proprietor."
ZULU GIRLS NOT COY
Where men are so deficient in sentiment and manly instincts that one young woman seems to them about as good as another, it is hardly strange that the women too should lack those qualities of delicacy, gentleness, and modesty which make the weaker sex adorable. The description of the bloody duels often fought by Kaffir women given by the British missionary Beste (Ploss, II., 421) indicates a decidedly Amazonian disposition. But the most suggestive trait of Kaffir women is the lack of feminine coyness in their matrimonial preliminaries. According to Gardiner (97),
"it is not regarded as a matter either of etiquette or of delicacy from which side the proposal of marriage may proceed—the overture is as often made by the women as the men."
"Courtship," says Shooter (50), "does not always begin with the men." Sometimes the girl's father proposes for her; and when a young woman does not receive an early proposal, her father or brother go from kraal to kraal and offer her till a bidder is found. Callaway (60) relates that when a young Zulu woman is ready to be married she goes to the kraal of the bridegroom, to stand there. She remains without speaking, but they understand her. If they "acknowledge" her, a goat is killed and she is entertained. If they do not like her, they give her a burning piece of firewood, to intimate that there is no fire in that kraal to warm herself by; she must go and kindle a fire for herself.[143]
CHARMS AHD POEMS
Though in all this there is considerable romance, there is no evidence of romantic love. But how about love-charms, poems, and stories? According to Grout (171), love-charms are not unknown in Zulu land. They are made of certain herbs or barks, reduced to a powder, and sent by the hand of some unsuspected friend to be given in a pinch of snuff, deposited in the dress, or sprinkled upon the person of the party whose favor is to be won. But love-powders argue a very materialistic way of regarding love and tell us nothing about sentiments. A hint at something more poetic is given by the Rev. J. Tyler (61), who relates that flowers are often seen on Zulu heads, and that one of them, the "love-making posy," is said to foster "love." Unfortunately that is all the information he gives us on this particular point, and the further details supplied by him (120-22) dash all hopes of finding traces of sentiment. The husband "eats alone," and when the wife brings him a drink of home-made beer "she must first sip to show there is no 'death in the pot.'" While he guzzles beer, loafs, smokes, and gossips, she has to do all the work at home as well as in the field, carrying her child on her back and returning in the evening with a bundle of firewood on her head. "In the winter the natives assemble almost daily for drinking and dancing, and these orgies are accompanied by the vilest obscenities and evil practices."
As regards poems Wallaschek remarks (6) that "the Kaffir in his poetry only recognizes a threefold subject: war, cattle, and excessive adulation of his ruler." One Kaffir love-poem, or rather marriage-poem, I have been able to find (Shooter, 236), and it is delightfully characteristic: