SINGULAR WEDDING CUSTOMS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 148, 23 June 1906, Page 11

SINGULAR WEDDING CUSTOMS.

« Mr. Douglas Sladen, writing in the "Girls' Own Paper" on tho women of Tunis, gives some interesting details as to the wedding customs observed by various Eastern natives. He says that, taking the bride home after a Jewish wedding is quite _ a picturesque affair, and bears something of the family resemblance to the Japanese ceremony which is so marked in an Arab wedding. After a meal, at which the bridegroom is not present, a torchlight procession is formed at the house of the bride. Preceded by children and supported by her girl friends, she sets out for her husband's house, with a conventional show of unwillingness. She is obliged to look sad. It is not so very long since she had to take two steps back for every three she took forward. This is said to have been so painful that at intervals she was given a rest in an armchair. But this is not done now, though the procession is still very slow, and would look like a funeral procession if tho grown-up people were not compelled by etiquette to laugh and the children to shout. When •they reach the husband's house they find him waiting outside. He has to lift the bride over the household, for in theory he has carried her off. As soon as she touches the floor of his house he plants his foot on hers, to signify possession. On the first evening of an Arab wedding the women of tho husband's household go to fetch the bride. The bridegroom is supported by his relations and friends. TJien tho ceremony becomes much like a Japanese wedding, where the bride has only her maid with her when she receives tho bridegroom. In Tunis, when the husband is admitted to sco the bride for tho first time she has her nurse with her. He slips a, piece of money into tho nurse's hand, and sho then leaves thorn. This first tete-a-tete does not last long, and, like a Japaneso wedding, has for its most striking feature the drinking out of the same cup; but tho Arabs have some prayers>, and the Japanese have not a semblance of religion about their weddings. The Arab then leaves his wife, as tho wedding takes two days, and on tho next day, before- she sees her husband again, she receives tho congratulations of her friends seated on a cushion. There is a sort of wedding breakfast of sugared and perfumed pastry, and a, dancing performance, at which tho musicians are always men, always Jews,' and always blind. The guests leave, and the husband cirrives in time for lunch. Married life begins with this first meal at tho same table. At Tunis tho Arab woman sometimes eats with her husband when ho is alone, but of course disappears when ho has company. The Arab is not so polite to his wife as tho Japanese. Ho speaks to her roughly, and sho has to reply to him humbly. Sho calls him "Sidi," which the French translate "Monseigneur." Ho has no pleasant word for her when ho returns homo ; she must bO absolutely obedient; though, like a Japanese wife, sho is a servant, and not a slave. In Tunis, as well as Japan, the wife has much more trouble about pleasing her mother-in-law than about pleasing her husband. Neither Jew nor Mussulman is supposed to see his brido before marriage; the aesthetic admiration beforehand which plays such a large part in English marriages is expressly forbidden to tho Arab. When ho reaches a marriageable ago his mother visits tho houses of her friends and chooses him a wifo according to her taste, not his. Or his father may conclude a union favourablo to his business interests with tho head of another family. Tho son plays quite a secondary part — ho is often put down for a marriage as soon as he is born.