LOVEMAKING EXTRAORDINARY.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7914, 4 August 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

LOVEMAKING EXTRAORDINARY.

MAN Y ODD WAYS OF WOOING. The wild gipsies of Galicia use cakes as love-letters. A coin is baked into the cake, which at the first opportunity is flung to the favoured object. The retention -of this is looked upon as a virtual “acceptance”; its forcible return, an intimation that the “attentions” are undesired. Amongst an Indium tribe 'a* rather pretty courtship custom obtains. At the annual “love-feast" a girl will hide a pitcher by the reeds near the river, and then, pointing towards the youth •with whom she is in love, s)he will whisper, “ Fair youth, find I” If the maiden seems as fair to him ns ho to her, he cardies, finds, and places the pitcher on her head, and the two are husband and wife. Among the semi-savage tribes in the Arabian desert, the lover tries to seize the girl while she is pasturing her flaither’s flocks. She pelts him with mud, sticks, and stones, and will be held in lifelong repute if she succeeds in wounding him. Once driven into her father’s tent, the lover'Ts reckoned to have won her, and the betrothal is proclaimed. The Eskimo smitten one goes one better, inasmuch as lie marches openly and without any beating about the bush to his loved one’** abode, seizes her by her long, strong hair or her fur gjnrments, and drags her to his lair of ice or tent of skin.

The maiden of Burma lights a. “lovelamp” in her window when the desired one passes at night, and if he be willing, lie speedily conveys the glad! information to her. When the Sumatra girl IDs reached twenty-five—and her life up to then has been passed in strict seclusion —and no one ibas come to ask for her hand, she attends to the matter in her own way, dresses in red, and goes out twice a day, until successful, to find :*. husband.

A remarkable custom prevails among the Dvaks of Borneo. When one of them would woo the maiden of bis'heart he chivalrously helps her in the hardest portion of her uneasy daily toil. If she smiles upon him, ever so sweetly, he does not immediately respond, but wait.? until the next dark night, Then .he steals to her house, and lightly wakens her a* she lies beside her sleeping parents. The parents, if they approve, make no sign, but sleep on —or pretend to. If the girl accepts, she rhes, and takes from her lover the betel and sweetmeats he has brought her. That seals their betrothal, and lie departs a.si lie came, neither speaking nor being spoken to.