"The children are often married very early, and engaged earlier still. The bridegroom goes with his companions to fetch his bride; but after having talked with her parents he returns without having seen her. The bride thereafter remains another whole year with her parents. After its expiration the bridegroom sends women and a camel to bring her to his home; she is taken away with her tent, but the bridal escort is often fooled by the substitution in the bride's place of another girl, who allows herself to be taken along, carefully veiled, and after the village has been left behind betrays herself and runs away."
These Beni Amer are of course far superior in culture to the Bushmen, Hottentots, Kaffirs, and West Coast peoples we have been considering so far, having long been in contact with Oriental influences. It is therefore as strange as it is instructive to note that as soon as a race becomes civilized enough to feel a kind of love exalted above mere sensuality, special pains are taken to interpose fresh obstacles, as in the above case, where it is good form to suppress all affection, and where a young man may not see his bride even after engagement. This last custom seems to be of common occurrence in this part of Africa. Munzinger (387) says of the Kunama: "As among the border peoples engagements are often made at a very early age, after which time bride and bridegroom avoid each other;" and again (147) concerning the region of Massua, on the Red Sea:
"From the day of the engagement the young man is obliged to carefully avoid the bride and her mother. The desire to see her after the engagement is considered very improper, and often leads to a breaking-up of the affair. If the youth meets the girl accidentally, she veils her face and her friends surround her to cover her from the bridegroom's sight."
PASTORAL LOVE
These attachments are so shallow that if the fortune-teller who is always consulted gives an unfavorable forecast, the engagement is forthwith broken off. It is instructive to note further that the rigid separation of a man from his betrothed serves merely to stifle legitimate love; its object cannot be to prevent improper intimacies, for before engagement the girls enjoy perfect liberty to do what they please, and after engagement they may converse with anyone except the lover. As Parkyns (II., 41) tells us, he is never allowed to see his intended wife even for a moment, unless he can bribe some female friend to arrange it so he can get a peep at her by concealing himself; but if the girl discovers him she covers her face, screams, runs away, and hides. This "coyness" is a pure sham. In reality the Abyssinian girl is anything but coy. Munzinger thus describes her character:
"The shepherd girls in the neighborhood of Massua always earn some money by carrying water and provisions to the city. The youngest girls are sent there heedlessly, and are often cheated out of more than their money, and therefore they do not usually make the best of wives, being coquettish and very eager for money. The refinements of innocence must not be sought for in this country; they are incompatible with the simple arrangement of the houses and the unrestrained freedom of conversation. No one objects to this, a family's only anxiety being that the girl should not lose the semblance of virginity…. If a child is born it is mercilessly killed by the girl's grandmother."
Sentimental admirers of what they suppose to be genuine "pastoral love poetry" will find further food for thought in the following Abyssinian picture from Parkyns (II., 40):
"The boys are turned out wild to look after the sheep and cattle; and the girls from early childhood are sent to fetch water from the well or brook, first in a gourd, and afterward in a jar proportioned to their strength. These occupations are not conducive to the morality of either sex. If the well be far from the village, the girls usually form parties to go thither, and amuse themselves on the road by singing sentimental or love songs, which not unfrequently verge upon the obscene, and indulge in conversation of a similar description; while, during their halt at the well for an hour or so, they engage in romps of all kinds, in which parties of the other sex frequently join. This early license lays the foundation for the most corrupt habits, when at a later period they are sent to the woods to collect fuel."
James Bruce, one of the earliest Europeans to visit the Abyssinians, describes them as living practically in a state of promiscuity, divorce being so frequent that he once saw a woman surrounded by seven former husbands, and there being hardly any difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy. Another old writer, Rev. S. Gobat, describes the Abyssinians as light-minded, having nothing constant but inconstancy itself. A more recent writer, J. Hotten (133-35), explains, in the following sentence, a fact which has often misled unwary observers:
"Females are rarely gross or immodest outwardly, seeing that they need in no way be ashamed of the freest intercourse with the other sex," "Rape is venial, and adultery regards only the husband."