Thirty years in Madagascar

by Thomas T. Matthews

One of the pastors of Ampàribè was also one of the queen’s chaplains. The village pastor had complained to him of the treatment he and his people had received at the hands of the officer for doing their duty. One day, while conversing with the queen about the progress of the churches, he told her about the faithful little village church and the conduct of this officer. The queen summoned all the parties before her, heard all that had taken place, and asked the officer if the statements made were correct, and he had to admit that they were. She ordered him to take back his wife, and for persecuting the pastor and church for doing their duty she disgraced him, took away all his honours and reduced him to the ranks. The queen then turned to the pastor and office-bearers of the church and thanked them for so courageously doing their duty, and said: ‘Remember that in the Church of Jesus Christ we are all equal. I am the same as a slave woman there!’ That was a most extraordinary statement for her to make. Twenty years before, such a statement might have cost her her crown, if not her life.

On one occasion a woman appealed to the queen to be separated from her husband, to whom she had taken a great dislike. She said that she hated him and could not live with him, and did not wish to see his face again as long as he lived. Her Majesty ordered her to be brought before her, and inquired fully into her case. She asked if the husband was a bad man, or if he used her badly. The woman said ‘No.’ But when asked why she wished to be separated from him she could give no reason, except that she had taken such a great dislike to him that she could no longer live with him. After hearing all the woman had to say, Her Majesty replied that all she wished could be very easily accomplished, and the woman was accordingly jubilant. The queen summoned an officer, to whom she said: ‘This woman has appealed to me to be separated from her husband, whom she says that she hates, and that she does not want to see his face again. Now you take charge of her, take her to Fort Dauphin (at the extreme south of the island, five hundred miles from the capital), where she is to live for the rest of her life, and so make certain that she never sees again the husband whom she hates so much.’

The woman was speechless for a few moments, but, when she had recovered herself, and fully realized what the queen’s orders involved, she fell on her knees crying for mercy, hugged and kissed Her Majesty’s feet, promising to return at once to her husband, to be a good and faithful wife to him, and never again to say that she hated him. The queen, however, paid no attention to her appeals; so the officer came forward and laid hold of her to lead her away; thereupon she fairly became frantic, screamed with terror, clung to the royal feet, and pleaded in such agony for mercy that the queen, seeing that she had most thoroughly frightened her, extended mercy to her, revoked her order, and sent the officer home with her to her husband with instructions that he was to treat her kindly.

I was six years in Madagascar before I had to perform the marriage ceremony for any of our people. We found the vast majority of the church members and adherents married, and those of the latter who were not could not be persuaded to follow the Christian mode of marriage. They said our agreement was too hard, it was till death. We might take our wives till death, as they were wise and good; but as their women were foolish and bad, they could not consent to take them until death. Their view of marriage was that of their own proverb which says that marriage is like marketing—if the parties don’t agree they simply separate.

At last one of my deacons, who was a widower, wished to marry again, and he asked me to perform the marriage ceremony. We had the marriage in the station church one Sabbath morning at the close of the service. The deacon and his bride stood up in front of the rail, and I began reading the marriage service. At one part of it I had to ask the usual question—Efa làsa va ny vòdiòndry? i. e. ‘Has the sheep’s rump gone?’

In former times quarrels seem to have been made up, and serious agreements concluded over the carcase of a slain animal, after which a feast followed (Gen. xxxi. 44–55). Perhaps the marriage agreement was made or concluded over the carcase of a sheep, after which the hinder quarters may have been handed over to the father and mother of the bride, or her guardians, and the reception by them of ny vòdiòndry in the presence of witnesses made the marriage legal. It afterwards came about that a small piece of money took the place of the hinder quarters of the sheep; but that still retained the name of ny vòdiòndry, ‘the sheep’s rump,’ and the reception of that by the father and mother of the bride, or by her guardians, constituted the marriage legal. Not that there was much in the legality; for a man might divorce his wife at any time by simply saying to her, ‘Thanks, go!’ She could not divorce him, but he could divorce her at any time. We had to ask, therefore, while reading the marriage service, if the legal transaction had taken place, because if not we could not go on with the service till it had.

My wife had never read the Malagasy marriage service, I don’t think she even knew about the vòdiòndry; certainly she did not know that we had to ask in the marriage service if that had gone or been received; and hence, when I called out in the middle of the service, ‘Has the sheep’s rump gone?’ the look of surprise and horror which came over her face was a thing to be remembered. I suspect she feared I had taken leave of my senses.

During the previous year our station church had given a salary of £5 to their good old pastor Razàka, who, up till then, had not received any salary, although he had laboured ‘in season and out of season’ for twenty years for the church and district; but, during 1878, they agreed to give their second pastor £2 8s. a year, and an evangelist also £2 8s. They paid the teachers of the Congregational school £7 4s. a year, gave £2 to the Native Missionary Society, besides congregational expenses, which would probably be £2. In all this amounted to £21—but it was to them then what £105 would have been to us. This was from a poor village church of ninety-six members, a third of whom were slaves!

The year 1879 was most disastrous to all branches of the work, for the central provinces, and Vònizòngo in particular, were visited by another epidemic of malarial fever, which was much more severe than that of the previous year. The former had probably carried off 5,000 people, yet it was mild when compared with what we had in 1879. We ourselves also suffered much more severely than we had done in the previous year—partly because we were both very much exhausted by eight years’ very hard work in one of the worst fever districts of the island. For, notwithstanding all the precautions and care that we took, I was prostrated eleven times with fever, and my wife seven times, and some of our children about a dozen times, although during twelve months we had used nearly two ounces of quinine, to which, under God, I believe that we owed our lives.

Towards the end of the previous year I had again brought under the notice of our churches the subject of teaching our adherents to read. The matter was taken up very heartily by our station church, and afterwards by the various churches in the district. They also entered into the plans with great heartiness, and the result was that in a short time a large number of the churches were at work. We arranged that the church members who could read should form evening classes in their own villages to teach the adherents who could not. They were very much assisted in many villages by the elder scholars from the village school, and in the course of a few weeks we had 2,000 adults gathered into evening classes learning to read! Alphabet sheets, to the value of £1, were given to them, and they themselves spent £7 on first lesson books! The news of what we were doing in Vònizòngo spread, and the subject of teaching the adult adherents to read, that they might be able to read the Bible for themselves, was brought before the church at the ‘union meetings.’ This stimulated our people again, and they worked eagerly until, first the epidemic, and then another conscription for the army, broke up nearly all the evening classes for a time; but the progress that was made in some congregations even during the very short time these classes were at work, was really astonishing.