A BOER'S WOOING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 14, 5 April 1900, Page 5

A BOER'S WOOING.

The greatest compliment a Boer can pay his dead wife is to marry again immediately. Six weeks is a long interval between the death of the first and the marriage of the becond wife. Ibis leads to strange complications. The widower goes a wooing in the heaviest crape and during the ' sitting up ' talks fitfully of the lost one. The sitting up is one of the most curious customs cf courtBhip to be found anywhere in the world. It consists in the young couple literally sitting up all night in solemn state with a lighted candle before them. For a young man to a'-k that a candle may be brought, is considered an equivalent to a proposal. Well-dowered maidens frequently sit up three nights a week, each time with a different aspirant.