But I, poor I, had not even one.
Yet I fell desperately in love one day,
My eye was filled with the beauty of Vasunilawedua.
She ran along the beach, she called the canoe-men.
She is conveyed to the town where her beloved dwells.
Na Ulumatua sits in his canoe unfastening its gear.
He asks her, "Why have you come here, Sovanalasikula?"
"They have been falling in love at Vunivanua," she answers;
"I, too, have fallen in love. I love your lovely son,
Vasunilawedua."
Na Ulumatua rose to his feet. He loosened a tambua whale's
tooth from the canoe.
"This," he said, presenting it to her, "is my offering to
you for your return. My son cannot wed you, lady."
Tears stream from her eyes, they stream down on her breast.
"Let me only live outside his house," she says;
"I will sleep upon the wood-pile. If I may only light his
seluka [cigarrette] for him, I shall rejoice.
If I may only hear his voice from a distance, it will
suffice. Life will be pleasant to me."
Na Ulumatua replied, "Be magnanimous, lady, and return.
We have many girls of our own. Return to your own land.
Vasunilawedua cannot wed a stranger."
Sovanalasikula went away crying.
She returned to her own town, forlorn.
Her life was sadness.
Ia nam bosulu.

Tregear (102) describes the "wooing house" in which New Zealand girls
used to stand up in the dark and say: "I love so-and-so, I want him
for a husband;" whereupon the chosen lover, if willing, would say yes,
or cough to signify his assent. Among the Pueblo Indians

"the usual order of courtship is reversed; when a girl is
disposed to marry, she does not wait for a young man to
propose to her, but selects one to her own liking and
consults her father, who visits the parents of the youth and
acquaints them with his daughter's wishes. It seldom happens
that any objections to the match are made" (Bancroft, I.,
547);

and concerning the Spokane Indians the same writer says (276) that a
girl "may herself propose if she wishes." Among the Moquis, "instead
of the swain asking the hand of the fair one, she selects the young
man who is to her fancy, and then her father proposes the match to the
sire of the lucky youth" (Schoolcraft, IV., 86). Among the Dariens,
says Heriot (325), "it is considered no mark of forwardness" in a
woman "openly to avow her inclination," and in Paraguay, too, women
were allowed to propose (Moore, 261). Indian girls of the Hudson River
region

"were not debarred signifying their desire to enter
matrimonial life. When one of them wished to be married, she
covered her face with a veil and sat covered as an
indication of her desire. If she attracted a suitor,
negotiations were opened with parents or friends, presents
given, and the bride taken" (Ruttenber).

A comic mode of catching a husband is described in an episode from the
tale "Owasso and Wayoond" (Schoolcraft, _A.R._ II., 210-11):

"Manjikuawis was forward in her advances toward him.
He, however, paid no attention to it, and shunned her.
She continued to be very assiduous in attending to his
wants, such as cooking and mending his mocassins. She
felt hurt and displeased at his indifference, and
resolved to play him a trick. Opportunity soon offered.
The lodge was spacious, and she dug a hole in the
ground, where the young man usually sat, covering it
very carefully. When the brothers returned from the
chase the young man threw himself down carelessly at
the usual place, and fell into the cavity, his head and
feet remaining out, so that he was unable to extricate
himself. 'Ha! ha!' cried Manjikuawis, as she helped him
out, 'you are mine, I have caught you at last, and I
did it on purpose.' A smile came over the young man's
face, and he said, 'So be it, I will be yours;' and
from that moment they lived happily as man and wife."

It was a common thing among various Indian tribes for the women to
court distinguished warriors; and though they might have no choice in
the matter, they could at any rate place themselves temptingly in the
way of these braves, who, on their part, had no occasion to be coy,
since they could marry all the squaws they pleased. The squaws, too,
did not hesitate to indulge, if not in two husbands, in more than one
lover. Commenting on the Mandans, for instance, Maximilian Prinz zu
Wied declares (II., 127) that "coyness is not a virtue of the Indian
women; they often have two or three lovers at a time." Among the
Pennsylvania Indians it was a common thing for a girl to make suit to
a young man.

"Though the first address may be by the man, yet the other
is the most common. The squaws are generally very immodest
in their words and actions, and will often put the young men
to the blush. The men commonly appear to be possessed of
much more modesty than the women." (Bancroft, II., 140.)

Even a coating of culture does not seem to curb the young squaw's
propensity to make the first advances. Captain R.H. Pratt (_U.S. Geol.
and G.S_., IX., 260), of the Carlisle School, relates an amusing story
of a Kiowa young man who, under a variety of circumstances, "never
cared for girl. 'But when Laura say she love me, then I began to care
for girl.'"

In his _First Footsteps_ (85, 86) Burton gives a glimpse of the
"coyness" of Bedouin women:

"We met a party of Esa girls, who derided my color and
doubted the fact of my being a Moslem. The Arabs
declared me to be a shaykh of shaykhs, and translated
to the prettiest of the party an impromptu proposal of
marriage. She showed but little coyness and stated her
price to be an Andulli or necklace, a couple of
Tobes--she asked one too many--a few handfuls of beads,
and a small present for her papa. She promised, naïvely
enough, to call next day and inspect the goods. The
publicity of the town did not deter her, but the
shamefacedness of my two companions prevented our
meeting again."

In his book on Southern Abyssinia Johnston relates how, while staying
at Murroo, he was strongly recommended to follow the example of his
companions and take a temporary wife. There was no need of hunting for
helpmates--they offered themselves of their own accord. One of the
girls who presented herself as a candidate was stated by her friends
to be a very strong woman, who had already had four or five husbands.
"I thought this a rather strange recommendation," he adds, "but it was
evidently mentioned that she might find favor in my eyes." He found
that the best way out of such a dilemma was to engage the first old
hag that came along and leave it to her to ward off the others.
Masculine coyness under such conditions has its risks. Johnston
mentions the case of an Arab who, in the region of the Muzeguahs,
scorned a girl who wanted to be his temporary wife; whereupon "the
whole tribe asserted he had treated them with contempt by his haughty
conduct toward the girl, and demanded to know if she was not good
enough for him." He had to give them some brass wire and blue sood
before he could allay the national indignation aroused by his refusal
to take the girl. Women have rights which must be respected, even in
Africa!

In Dutch Borneo there is a special kind of "marriage by stratagem"
called _matep_. If a girl desires a particular man he is inveigled
into her house, the door is shut, the walls are hung with cloth of
different colors and other ornaments, dinner is served up and he is
informed of the girl's wish to marry him. If he declines, he is
obliged to pay the value of the hangings and the ornaments. (Roth,
II., CLXXXI.)

"Uncertain, coy, and hard to please" obviously cannot be sung of such
women.

In one of the few native Australian stories on record the two wives of
a man are represented as going to his brother's hut when he was
asleep, and imitating the voice of an emu. The noise woke him, and he
took his spear to kill them; but as soon as he ran out the two women
spoke and requested him to be their husband. (Wood's _Native Tribes_,
210.)

The fact that Australian women have absolutely no choice in the
assignment of husbands, must make them inclined to offer themselves to
men they like, just as Indian girls offer themselves to noted warriors
in the hope of thus calling attention to their personal attractions.
As we shall see later, one of the ways in which an Australian wins a
wife is by means of magic. In this game, as Spencer and Gillen tell us
(556), the women sometimes take the initiative, thus inducing a man to
elope with them.


WERE HEBREW AND GREEK WOMEN COY?

The English language is a queer instrument of thought. While coyness
has the various meanings of shyness, modest reserve, bashfulness,
shrinking from advances or familiarity, disdainfulness, the verb "to
coy" may mean the exact opposite--to coax, allure, entice, woo, decoy.
It is in _this_ sense that "coyness" is obviously a trait of primitive
maidens. What is more surprising is to find in brushing aside
prejudice and preconceived notions, that among ancient nations too it
is in this second sense rather than in the first that women are "coy."
The Hebrew records begin with the story of Adam and Eve, in which Eve
is stigmatized as the temptress. Rebekah had never seen the man chosen
for her by her male relatives, yet when she was asked if she would go
with his servant, she answered, promptly, "I will go." Rachel at the
well suffers her cousin to kiss her at first sight. Ruth does all the
courting which ends in making her the wife of Boaz. There is no
shrinking from advances, real or feigned, in any of these cases; no
suggestion of disguised feminine affection; and in two of them the
women make the advances. Potiphar's wife is another biblical case. The
word coy does not occur once in the Bible.

The idea that women are the aggressors, particularly in criminal
amours, is curiously ingrained in the literature of ancient Greece. In
the _Odyssey_ we read about the fair-haired goddess Circe, decoying
the companions of Odysseus with her sweet voice, giving them drugs and
potions, making them the victims of swinish indulgence of their
appetites. When Odysseus comes to their rescue she tries to allure him
too, saying, "Nay, then, pat up your blade within its sheath, and let
us now approach our bed that there we too may join in love and learn
to trust each other." Later on Odysseus has his adventure with the
Sirens, who are always "casting a spell of penetrating song, sitting
within a meadow," in order to decoy passing sailors. Charybdis is
another divine Homeric female who lures men to ruin. The island nymph
Calypso rescues Odysseus and keeps him a prisoner to her charms, until
after seven years he begins to shed tears and long for home "because
the nymph pleased him no more." Nor does the human Nausicäa manifest
the least coyness when she meets Odysseus at the river. Though he has
been cast on the shore naked, she remains, after her maids have run
away alarmed, and listens to his tale of woe. Then, after seeing him
bathed, anointed, and dressed, she exclaims to her waiting maids: "Ah,
might a man like this be called my husband, having his home here and
content to stay;" while to him later on she gives this broad hint:
"Stranger, farewell! when you are once again in your own land,
remember me, and how before all others it is to me you owe the saving
of your life."

Nausicäa is, however, a prude compared with the enamoured woman as the
Greek poets habitually paint her. Pausanias (II., Chap. 31), speaking
of a temple of Peeping Venus says:

"From this very spot the enamoured Phaedra used to
watch Hippolytus at his manly exercises. Here still
grows the myrtle with pierced leaves, as I am told. For
being at her wit's ends and finding no ease from the
pangs of love, she used to wreak her fury on the leaves
of this myrtle."

Professor Rohde, the most erudite authority on Greek erotic
literature, writes (34):

"It is characteristic of the Greek popular tales which
Euripides followed, in what might be called his
tragedies of adultery, that they _always make the woman
the vehicle of the pernicious passion_; it seems as if
Greek feeling could not conceive of a _man_ being
seized by an unmanly soft desire and urged on by it to
passionate disregard of all human conventions and
laws."


MASCULINE COYNESS

Greek poets from Stesichorus to the Alexandrians are fond of
representing coy men. The story told by Athenaeus (XIV., ch. 11) of
Harpalyke, who committed suicide because the youth Iphiclus coyly
spurned her, is typical of a large class. No less significant is the
circumstance that when the coy backwardness happens to be on the side
of a female, she is usually a woman of masculine habits, devoted to
Diana and the chase. Several centuries after Christ we still find in
the romances an echo of this thoroughly Greek sentiment in the coy
attitude, at the beginning, of their youthful heroes.[20]

The well-known legend of Sappho--who flourished about a thousand years
before the romances just referred to were written--is quite in the
Greek spirit. It is thus related by Strabo:

"There is a white rock which stretches out from Leucas
to the sea and toward Cephalonia, that takes its name
from its whiteness. The rock of Leucas has upon it a
temple of Apollo, and the leap from it was supposed to
stop love. From this it is said that Sappho first, as
Menander says somewhere, in pursuit of the haughty
Phaon, urged on by maddening desire, threw herself from
its far-seen rocks, imploring thee [Apollo], lord and
king."

Four centuries after Sappho we find Theocritus harping on the same
theme. His _Enchantress_ is a monologue in which a woman relates how
she made advances to a youth and won him. She saw him walking along
the road and was so smitten that she was prostrated and confined to
her bed for ten days. Then she sent her slave to waylay the youth,
with these instructions: "If you see him alone, say to him: 'Simaitha
desires you,' and bring him here." In this case the youth is not coy
in the least; but the sequel of the story is too bucolic to be told
here.


SHY BUT NOT COY

It is well-known that the respectable women of Greece, especially the
virgins, were practically kept under lock and key in the part of the
house known as the gynaikonitis. This resulted in making them shy and
bashful--but not coy, if we may judge from the mirror of life known as
literature. Ramdohr observes, pertinently (III., 270):

"Remarkable is the easy triumph of lovers over the
innocence of free-born girls, daughters of citizens,
examples of which may be found in the _Eunuchus_ and
_Adelphi_ of Terence. They call attention to the low
opinion the ancients had of a woman's power to guard
her sensual impulses, and of her own accord resist
attacks on her honor."

The Abbé Dubois says the same thing about Hindoo girls, and the reason
why they are so carefully guarded. It is hardly necessary to add that
since no one would be so foolish as to call a man honest who refrains
from stealing merely because he has no opportunity, it is equally
absurd to call a woman honest or coy who refrains from vice only
because she is locked up all the time. The fact (which seems to give
Westermarck (64-65) much satisfaction), that some Australians,
American Indian and other tribes watch young girls so carefully, does
not argue the prevalence of chaste coyness, but the contrary. If the
girls had an instinctive inclination to repel improper advances it
would not be necessary to cage and watch them. This inclination is not
inborn, does not characterize primitive women, but is a result of
education and culture.


MILITARISM AND MEDIAEVAL WOMEN

Greatly as Greeks and Indians differ in some respects, they have two
things in common--a warlike spirit and contempt for women. "When Greek
meets Greek then comes a tug of war," and the Indian's chief delight
is scalp hunting. The Greeks, as Rohde notes (42),

"depict their greatest heroes as incited to great deeds only
by eagerness for battle and desire for glory. The love of
women barely engages their attention transiently in hours of
idleness."

Militarism is ever hostile to love except in its grossest forms. It
brutalizes the men and prevents the growth of feminine qualities,
coyness among others. Hence, wherever militarism prevails, we seek in
vain for feminine reserve. An interesting illustration of this may be
found in a brochure by Theodor Krabbes, _Die Frau im Altfranzösischen
Karls-Epos_ (9-38). The author, basing his inferences on an exhaustive
study and comparison of the Chansons de Geste of the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, draws the following general conclusions:

"Girlish shyness is not a trait of the daughters, least
of all those of heathen origin. Masculine tendencies
characterize them from childhood. Fighting pleases them
and they like to look on when there is a battle....
Love plays an important role in nearly all the Chansons
de Geste.... The woman wooes, the man grants: nearly
always in these epics we read of a woman who loves,
rarely of one who is loved.... In the very first hour
of their acquaintance the girl is apt to yield herself
entirely to the chosen knight, and she persists in her
passion for him even if she is entirely repulsed. There
is no more rest for her. Either she wooes him in
person, or chooses a messenger who invites the coveted
man to a rendezvous. The heathen woman who has to guard
captured Franks and who has given her heart to one of
them, hies herself to the dungeon and offers him her
love. She begs for his love in return and seeks in
every way to win it. If he resists, she curses him,
makes his lot less endurable, withholds his food or
threatens him with death until he is willing to accede
to her wishes. If this has come to pass she overwhelms
him with caresses at the first meeting. She is eager to
have them reciprocated; often the lover is not tender
enough to please her, then she repeatedly begs for
kisses. She embraces him delightedly even though he be
in full armor and in presence of all his companions.
Girlish shyness and modest backwardness are altogether
foreign to her nature.... She never has any moral
scruples.... If he is unwilling to give up his
campaign, she is satisfied to let him go the next
morning if he will only marry her.

"The man is generally described as cold in love.
References to a knight's desire for a woman's love are
very scant, and only once do we come across a hero who
is quite in love. The young knight prefers more serious
matters; his first desire is to win fame in battle,
make rich booty.[21] He looks on love as superfluous,
indeed he is convinced that it incapacitates him from
what he regards as his proper life-task. He also fears
the woman's infidelity. If he allows her to persuade
him to love, he seeks material gain from it; delivery
from captivity, property, vassals.... The lover is
often tardy, careless, too deficient in tenderness, so
that the woman has to chide him and invite his
caresses. A rendezvous is always brought about only
through her efforts, and she alone is annoyed if it is
disturbed too soon. Even when the man desires a woman,
he hardly appears as a wooer. He knows he is sure of
the women's favor; they make it easy for him; he can
have any number of them if he belongs to a noble
family.... Even when the knight is in love--which is
very rare--the first advances are nearly always made by
the woman; it is she who proposes marriage.

"Marriage as treated in the epics is seldom based on
love. The woman desires wedlock, because she hopes
thereby to secure her rights and better her chances of
protection. It is for this reason that we see her so
often eagerly endeavoring to secure a promise of
marriage."


WHAT MADE WOMEN COY?

Sufficient evidence has now been adduced to make it clear that the
first of the two questions posed at the outset of this chapter must be
answered in the negative. Coyness is _not_ an innate or universal
trait of femininity, but is often absent, particularly where man's
absorption in war and woman's need of protection prevent its growth
and induce the females to do the courting. This being the case and war
being the normal state of the lower races, our next task is to
ascertain what were the influences that induced woman to adopt the
habit of repelling advances instead of making them. It is one of the
most interesting questions in sexual psychology, which has never been
answered satisfactorily; it and gains additional interest from the
fact that we find among the most ancient and primitive races phenomena
which resemble coyness and have been habitually designated as such. As
we shall see in a moment, this is an abuse of language, confounding
genuine resistance or aversion with coyness.

Chinese maidens often feel so great an aversion to marriage as
practised in their country that they prefer suicide to it. Douglas
says (196) that Chinese women often ask English ladies, "Does your
husband beat you?" and are surprised if answered "No." The gallant
Chinaman calls his wife his "dull thorn," and there are plenty of
reasons apart from Confucian teachings why "for some days before the
date fixed, the bride assumes all the panoply of woe, and weeps and
wails without ceasing." She is about to face the terrible ordeal of
being confronted for the first time with the man who has been chosen
for her, and who may be the ugliest, vilest wretch in the
world--possibly even a leper, such cases being on record. Douglas
(124) reports the case of six girls who committed suicide together to
avoid marriage. There exist in China anti-matrimonial societies of
girls and young widows, the latter doubtless, supplying the experience
that serves as the motive for establishing such associations.

Descending to the lowest stratum of human life as witnessed in
Australia, we find that, as Meyer asserts (11), the bride appears
"generally to go very unwillingly" to the man she has been assigned
to. Lumholtz relates that the man seizes the woman by the wrists and
carries her off "despite her screams, which can be heard till she is a
mile away." "The women," he says, "always make resistance; for they do
not like to leave their tribe, and in many instances they have the
best of reasons for kicking their lovers." What are these reasons? As
all observers testify, they are not allowed any voice in the choice of
their husbands. They are usually bartered by their father or brothers
for other women, and in many if not most cases the husbands assigned
to them are several times their age. Before they are assigned to a
particular man the girls indulge in promiscuous intercourse, whereas
after marriage they are fiercely guarded. They may indeed attempt to
elope with another man more suited to their age, but they do so at the
risk of cruel injury and probable death. The wives have to do all the
drudgery; they get only such food as the husbands do not want, and on
the slightest suspicion of intrigue they are maltreated horribly.
Causes enough surely for their resistance to obligatory marriage. This
resistance is a frank expression of genuine unwillingness, or
aversion, and has nothing in common with real coyness, which signifies
the mere _semblance_ of unwillingness on the part of a woman who is at
least _half-willing_. Such expressions as Goldsmith's "the coy maid,
half willing to be pressed," and Dryden's

When the kind nymph would coyness feign,
And hides but to be found again,

indicate the nature of true coyness better than any definitions. There
are no "coy looks," no "feigning" in the actions of an Australian girl
about to be married to a man who is old enough to be her grandfather.
The "cold disdain" is real, not assumed, and there is no "dissemblance
of feminine affection."


CAPTURING WOMEN

The same reasoning applies to the customs attending wife-capturing in
general, which has prevailed in all parts of the world and still
prevails in some regions. To take one or two instances of a hundred
that might be cited from books of travel in all parts of the world:
Columbus relates that the Caribs made the capture of women the chief
object of their expeditions. The California Indians worked up their
warlike spirit by chanting a song the substance of which was, "let us
go and carry off girls" (Waitz, IV., 242). Savages everywhere have
looked upon women as legitimate spoils of war, desirable as concubines
and drudges. Now even primitive women are attached to their homes and
relatives, and it is needless to say their resistance to the enemy who
has just slain their father and brothers and is about to carry them
off to slavery, is genuine, and has no more trace of coyness in it
than the actions of an American girl who resists the efforts of
unknown kidnappers to drag her from her home.

But besides real capture of women there has existed, and still exists
in many countries, what is known as sham-capture--a custom which has
puzzled anthropologists sorely. Herbert Spencer illustrates it
(_P.S._, I., § 288) by citing Crantz, who says, concerning the
Eskimos, that when a damsel is asked in marriage, she

"directly falls into the greatest apparent
consternation, and runs out of doors tearing her hair;
for single women always affect the utmost bashfulness
and aversion to any proposal of marriage, lest they
should lose their reputation for modesty."

Spencer also quotes Burckhardt, who describes how the bride among
Sinai Arabs defends herself with stones, even though she does not
dislike the lover; "for according to custom, the more she struggles,
bites, kicks, cries, and strikes, the more she is applauded ever after
by her own companions." During the procession to the husband's camp
"decency obliges her to cry and sob most bitterly." Among the
Araucanians of Chili, according to Smith (215) "it is a point of honor
with the bride to resist and struggle, however willing she may be."

While conceding that "the manners of the inferior races do not imply
much coyness," Spencer, nevertheless, thinks "we cannot suppose
coyness to be wholly absent." He holds that in the cases just cited
coyness is responsible for the resistance of the women, and he goes so
far as to make this coyness "an important factor," in accounting for
the custom of marriage by capture which has prevailed among so many
peoples in all parts of the world. Westermarck declares (388) that
this suggestion can scarcely be disproved, and Grosse (105) echoes his
judgment. To me, on the contrary, it seems that these distinguished
sociologists are putting the cart before the horse. They make the
capture a sequence of "coyness," whereas in truth the coyness (if it
may be so called) is a result of capture. The custom of wife capture
can be easily explained without calling in the aid of what we have
seen to be so questionable a thing as primitive female coyness.
Savages capture wives as the most coveted spoils of war. They capture
them, in other instances, because polygamy and female infanticide have
disturbed the equilibrium of the sexes, thus compelling the young men
to seek wives elsewhere than in their own tribes; and the same result
is brought about (in Australia, for instance), by the old men's habit
of appropriating all the young women by a system of exchange, leaving
none for the young men, who, therefore, either have to persuade the
married women to elope--at the risk of their lives--or else are
compelled to steal wives elsewhere. In another very large number of
cases the men stole brides--willing or unwilling--to avoid paying
their parents for them.


THE COMEDY OF MOCK CAPTURE

Thus the custom of real capture is easily accounted for. What calls
for an explanation is the _sham_ capture and resistance in cases where
both the parents and the bride are perfectly willing. Why should
primitive maidens who, as we have seen, are rather apt than not to
make amorous advances, repel their suitors so violently in these
instances of mock capture? Are they, after all, coy--more coy than
civilized maidens? To answer this question let us look at one of
Spencer's witnesses more carefully. The reason Crantz gives for the
Eskimo women's show of aversion to marriage is that they do it, "lest
they lose their reputation for modesty." Now modesty of any kind is a
quality unknown to Eskimos. Nansen, Kane, Hayes, and other explorers
have testified that the Eskimos of both sexes take off all their
clothes in their warm subterranean homes. Captain Beechey has
described their obscene dances, and it is well-known that they
consider it a duty to lend their wives and daughters to guests. Some
of the native tales collected by Rink (236-37; 405) indicate most
unceremonious modes of courtship and nocturnal frolics, which do not
stop even at incest. To suppose that women so utterly devoid of moral
sensibility could, of their own accord and actuated by modesty and
bashfulness manifest such a coy aversion to marriage that force has to
be resorted to, is manifestly absurd. In attributing their antics to
modesty, Crantz made an error into which so many explorers have
fallen--that of interpreting the actions of savages from the point of
view of civilization--an error more pardonable in an unsophisticated
traveller of the eighteenth century than in a modern sociologist.

If we must therefore reject Herbert Spencer's inference as to the
existence of primitive coyness and its consequences, how are we to
account for the comedy of mock capture? Several writers have tried to
crack the nut. Sutherland (I., 200) holds that sham capture is not a
survival of real capture, but "the festive symbolism of the contrast
in the character of the sexes--courage in the man and shyness in the
woman"--a fantastic suggestion which does not call for discussion,
since, as we know, the normal primitive woman is anything but shy.
Abercromby (I., 454) is another writer who believes that sham capture
is not a survival of real capture, but merely a result of the innate
general desire on the part of the men to display courage--a view which
dodges the one thing that calls for an explanation--the resistance of
the women. Grosse indulges in some curious antics (105-108). First he
asks: "Since real capture is everywhere an exception and is looked on
as punishable, why should the semblance of capture have ever become a
general and approved custom?" Then he asks, with a sneer, why
sociology should be called upon to answer such questions anyhow; and a
moment later he, nevertheless, attempts an answer, on Spencerian
lines. Among inferior races, he remarks, women are usually coveted as
spoils of war. The captured women become the wives or concubines of
the warriors and thus represent, as it were, trophies of their valor.
Is it not, therefore, inevitable that the acquisition of a wife by
force should be looked on, among warlike races, as the most honorable
way of getting her, nay, in course of time, as the only one worthy of
a warrior? But since, he continues, not all the men can get wives in
that way, even among the rudest tribes, these other men consoled
themselves with investing the peaceful home-taking of a bride also
with the show of an honorable capture.

In other words, Grosse declares on one page that it is absurd to
derive approved sham capture from real capture because real capture is
everywhere exceptional only and is always considered punishable; yet
two pages later he argues that sham capture _is_ derived from real
capture because the latter is so honorable! As a matter of fact, among
the lowest races known, wife-stealing is not considered honorable.
Regarding the Australians, Curr states distinctly (I., 108) that it
was not encouraged because it was apt to involve a whole tribe in war
for one man's sake. Among the North American Indians, on the other
hand, where, as we saw in the chapter on Honorable Polygamy, a
wife-stealer is admired by both men and women, sham capture does _not_
prevail. Grosse's argument, therefore, falls to the ground.


WHY THE WOMEN RESIST

Prior to all these writers Sir John Lubbock advanced (98) still
another theory of capture, real and sham. Believing that men once had
all their wives in common, he declares that

"capture, and capture alone, could originally give a
man the right to monopolize a woman to the exclusion of
his fellow-clansmen; and that hence, even after all
necessity for actual capture had long ceased, the
symbol remained; capture having, by long habit, come to
be received as a necessary preliminary to marriage."

This theory has the same shortcoming as the others. While accounting
for the capture, it does not explain the resistance of the women. In
real capture they had real reasons for kicking, biting, and howling,
but why should they continue these antics in cases of sham capture?
Obviously another factor came into play here, which has been strangely
overlooked--parental persuasion or command. Among savages a father
owns his daughter as absolutely as his dog; he can sell or exchange
her at pleasure; in Australia, "swapping" daughters or sisters is the
commonest mode of marriage. Now, stealing brides, or eloping to avoid
having to pay for them, is of frequent occurrence everywhere among
uncivilized races. To protect themselves against such loss of personal
property it must have occurred to parents at an early date that it
would be wise to teach their daughters to resist all suitors until it
has become certain that their intentions are honorable--that is, that
they intend to pay. In course of time such teaching (strengthened by
the girls' pride at being purchased for a large sum) would assume the
form of an inviolable command, having the force of a taboo and, with
the stubbornness peculiar to many social customs, persisting long
after the original reasons have ceased to exist.

In other words, I believe that the peculiar antics of the brides in
cases of sham capture are neither due to innate feminine coyness nor
are they a direct survival of the genuine resistance made in real
capture; but that they are simply a result of parental dictation which
assigns to the bride the rôle she must play in the comedy of
"courtship." I find numerous facts supporting this view, especially in
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld's _Hochzeitsbuch_ and Schroeder's
_Hochzeitsgebräuche der Esten_.

Describing the marriage customs of the Mordvins, Mainow says that the
bridegroom sneaks into the bride's house before daybreak, seizes her
and carries her off to where his companions are waiting with their
wagons. "Etiquette," he adds, "_demands_ she should resist violently
and cry loudly, even if she is entirely in favor of the elopement."
Among the Votyaks girl-stealing (kukem) occurs to this day. If the
father is unwilling or asks too much, while the young folks are
willing, the girl goes to work in the field and the lover carries her
off. _On the way to his house she is cheerful, but when they reach the
lover's house she begins to cry and wail_, whereupon she is locked up
in a cabin that has no window. The father, having found out where she
is, comes and demands payment. If the lover offers too little, the
parent plies his whip on him. Among the Ostyaks such elopements, to
avoid payment, are frequent. Regarding the Esthonians, Schroeder says
(40): "When the intermediary comes, the girl _must_ conceal herself in
some place until she is either found, _with her father's consent_,
or appears of her own accord."

In the old epic "Kalewipoeg," Salme hides in the garret and Linda in
the bath-room, and refuse to come out till after much coaxing and
urging.


QUAINT CUSTOMS

The words I have italicized indicate the passive rôle played by the
girls, who simply carry out the instructions given to them. The
parents are the stage-managers, and they know very well what they
want--money or brandy. Among the Mordvins, as soon as the suitor and
his friends are seen approaching the bride's house, it is barricaded,
and the defenders ask, "Who are you?" The answer is, "Merchants."
"What do you wish?" "Living goods." "We do not trade!" "We shall take
her by force." A show of force is made, but finally the suitors are
admitted, after paying twenty kopeks. In Little Russia it is customary
to barricade the door of the bride's house with a wheel, but after
offering a bottle of brandy as a "pass" the suitor's party is allowed
to enter.

Among the Esthonians custom _demands_ (Schroeder, 36), that a comedy
like the following be enacted. The intermediary comes to the bride's
house and pretends that he has lost a cow or a lamb, and asks
permission to hunt for it. The girl's relatives at first stubbornly
deny having any knowledge of its whereabouts, but finally they allow
the suitors to search, and the bride is usually found without much
delay. In Western Prussia (Berent district), after the bridegroom has
made his terms with the bride and her parents, he comes to their house
and says: "We were out hunting and saw a wounded deer run into this
house. May we follow its tracks?" Permission is granted, whereupon the
men start in pursuit of the bride, who has hidden away with the other
village maidens. At last the "hound"--one of the bridegroom's
companions--finds her and brings her to the lover.

Similar customs have prevailed in parts of Russia, Roumania, Servia,
Sardinia, Hungary, and elsewhere. In Old Finland the comedy continues
even after the nuptial knot has been tied. The bridal couple return
each to their home. Soon the groom appears at the bride's house and
demands to be admitted. Her father refuses to let him in. A "pass" is
thereupon produced and read, and this, combined with a few presents,
finally secures admission. In some districts the bride remains
invisible even during the wedding-dinner, and it is "good form" for
her to let the guests wait as long as possible, and not to appear
until after considerable coaxing by her mother. When a Votyak
bridegroom comes after the bride on the wedding-day she is denied to
him three times. After that she is searched for, dragged from her
hiding-place, and her face covered with a cloth, while she screams and
struggles. Then she is carried to the yard, placed on a blanket with
her face down, and the bridegroom belabors her with a stick on a
pillow which has been tied on her back. After that she becomes
obedient and amiable. A Mordvin bride must try to escape from the
wagon on the way to the church. In Old Finland the bride was
barricaded in her house even after the wedding, and the Island Swedes
have the same custom. This burlesque of bridal resistance after
marriage occurs also among the wild tribes of India. "After remaining
with her husband for ten days only," writes Dalton (192), "it is _the
correct thing_ for the wife to run away from him, and tell all her
friends that she loves him not and will see him no more." The
husband's duty is to seek her eagerly.

"I have seen a young wife thus found and claimed, and borne
away, screeching and struggling in the arms of her husband,
from the midst of a crowded bazaar. No one interferes on
these occasions."

More than enough has now been said to prove that in cases of sham
capture the girls simply follow their village customs blindly. Left to