rtship
consists in the precautions the parents of rich youths have to take to
protect them from designing poor girls and their mothers. Often, when
the parents of a rich youth are averse to the match, the coy bride
goes to their hut, jumps over the surrounding hedge, and remains there
enduring the family's abuse until they finally accept her. To prevent
such an invasion--a sort of inverted capture, in which the woman is
the aggressor--the parents of rich sons build very high hedges round
their houses to keep out girls! Not infrequently, boys and girls are
married when only six or eight years old, and forthwith live together
as husband and wife.

SOMALI LOVE-AFFAIRS

It is among the neighbors of these Gallas that Paulitschke (30)
fancied he discovered the existence of refined love:

"Adult youths and maidens have occasion, especially
while tending the cattle, to form attachments. These
are of an idealized nature, because the young folks are
brought up in a remarkably chaste and serious manner.
The father is proud of his blooming daughter and guards
her like a treasure.... In my opinion, marriages among
the Western Somals are mostly based on cordial mutual
affection. A young man renders homage to his beloved in
song. 'Thou art beautiful,' he sings, 'thy limbs are
plump, if thou wouldst drink camel's milk thou wert
more beautiful still.' The girl, on her part, gives
expression to her longing for the absent lover in this
melancholy song: 'The camel needs good grazing, and
dislikes to leave it. My beloved has left the country.
On account of the children of Sahal (the lover's
family), my heart is always so heavy. Others throw
themselves into the ocean, but I perish from grief.
Could I but find the beloved.'"

What evidence of "idealized" love is there in these poems? The girl
expresses longing for an absent man, and longing, as we have seen,
characterizes all kinds of love from the highest to the lowest. It is
one of the selfish ingredients of love, and is therefore evidence of
self-love, not of other-love. As for the lover's poem, what is it but
the grossest sensualism, the usual African apotheosis of fat? Imagine
an American lover saying to a girl, "You are beautiful for you are
plump, but you would be more beautiful still if you ate more pork and
beans"--would she regard this as evidence of refined love, or would
she turn he