The mystic rose : a study of primitive marriage / by Ernest Crawley.

  • Ernest Crawley
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mystic rose : a study of primitive marriage / by Ernest Crawley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rule is punished with death. Tapa-making belongs exclusively to women ; and it is “abu for men to touch it. The Kaffirs will not from superstitious motives allow women to touch their cattle.” Amongst the Dacotas custom and superstition ordain that the wife must carefully keep away from all that belongs to her husband’s sphere.* In New Zealand, a man who has any important business on hand, either in peace or war, is sapu, and must keep away from the female sex.* The fear of evil spirits shows itself from time to time during the long and wearisome marriage cere- monies of South Celebes; and methods are used to frustrate their evil intentions against the happiness of the young pair. There is also a fear that the soul of the bridegroom may fly away for sheer happiness.’ In China, a new bride is apt to be attacked by evil spirits causing her to be ill; hence the figure of “a great magician” (a Taoist priest), brandishing a sword, is painted on the sedan-chair she uses on the wedding- day. The sedan-chair in which a Manchu bride goes to the house of the bridegroom is “ disinfected” with incense, to drive away evil spirits, and in it is placed a calendar containing the names of idols who control the spirits of evil.” The Druses “have a superstition that leads them to suppose that Gins or evil spirits are more than usually busy on the occasion of marriage” and may interfere with the happiness of the pair.2 In English folklore “the malevolence of witchcraft seems to have taken the greatest pleasure in subtle assaults 1H, Melville, The Marquesas Islands, 13, 245. 2 Fournal of the Anthropological Institute, x. 11 ; xvi. 119. 3 Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie der Naturvolker, ili. 100. 4 Id, vi. 349. 5 B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, 30, 39, 333 van Eck, in De Indische Gids for 1881, 1038. 6 Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, 1. 95. 7 Lockhart, in Folklore, i. 487. 8 G, W. Chasseaud, The Druses of the Lebanon, 168.
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