In his anxiety to find cases of Romantic Love among North American and
other primitive peoples, Waitz is obliged to fall back on legends of
Lovers’ Leaps and Maiden Rocks, and on a poem about a South American
maiden who committed suicide on her lover’s grave to avoid falling into
the hands of the Spaniards. Legends and poems, unfortunately, do not
count for much as scientific evidence. At the same time, it would
doubtless be incorrect to assert on the strength of some of the
authorities just quoted that Love does not exist at all among savages,
and therefore to make the chapter on Love among Savages as brief as that
chapter on Snakes in Ireland. We shall find, on the contrary, that
several of Love’s “overtones” are occasionally present; and that though
full-fledged cupids may never appear with their poisoned arrows,
mischievous _amourettes_ sometimes do flit across the field of vision.
For the goddess of Love is ever watchful of an opportunity for one of
her emissaries to bag some game.
Romantic Love is dependent on opportunities for Courtship. Among savages
and semi-civilised nations we find three grades of Courtship—Capture,
Purchase, and Service. These must be briefly examined in turn.
(1) _Capture._—One of the most curious features of savage life is the
widely-prevalent custom called by M‘Lennan Exogamy, or marrying out.
This custom compels a man who wishes a wife of his own to steal or
purchase her of another tribe, private marriage within his own tribe
being considered criminal and even punishable with death. To this rule
of Exogamy Sir John Lubbock traces the origin of Monogamy. In his view
women were at first, like other kinds of property, held in common by the
tribe, any man being any woman’s husband _ad libitum_. No man could
therefore claim a woman for himself without infringing on the rights of
others. But if he stole a woman from another tribe, she became his
exclusive property, which he had a right to guard jealously, and to look
upon with the Pride of Conquest—a pride, however, quite distinct from
that which intoxicates a civilised lover when he finds, or fondly
imagines, that his goddess _has chosen him_ among all his rivals. The
primitive man’s pride is more like that of the warrior who wears a large
number of scalps in his belt; and as in his case marriage immediately
follows Capture, this feeling, moreover, belongs more properly to the
sphere of conjugal sentiment than to that of Love.
This primitive form of courtship, it is obvious, is very much ruder than
that which prevails in the animal kingdom, where the males alone
maltreat one another, while in this early human courtship the woman, if
she resists, is simply knocked on the head, and her senseless body
carried off to the captor’s tent. Diefenbach relates concerning the
Polynesians that “if a girl was courted by two suitors, each of them
grasped one arm of the beloved and pulled her toward him; the stronger
one got her, but in some cases not before her limbs had been pulled out
of joint.” And Waitz says that “the girls were commonly abducted by
force, which led frequently to most violent fights, in which the girl
herself was occasionally wounded, or even killed, to prevent her from
falling into the hands of the enemy.”
Mr. E. B. Tylor, after stating that marriage by Capture may be seen at
the present day among the fierce forest tribes of Brazil, continues:
“Ancient tradition knows this practice well, as where the men of
Benjamin carry off the daughters of Shiloh dancing at the feast, and in
the famous Roman tale of the rape of the Sabines, a legend putting in
historical form the wife-capture which in Roman custom remained as a
ceremony. What most clearly shows what a recognised old-world custom it
was, is its being thus kept up as a formality where milder manners
really prevailed. It had passed into this state among the Spartans, when
Plutarch says that though the marriage was really by friendly settlement
between the families, the bridegroom’s friends went through the pretence
of carrying off the bride by violence. Within a few generations the same
old habit was kept up in Wales, where the bridegroom and his friends,
mounted and armed as for war, carried off the bride; and in Ireland they
used even to hurl spears at the bride’s people, though at such a
distance that no one was hurt, except now and then by accident, as
happened when one Lord Howth lost an eye, which mischance seems to have
put an end to this curious relic of antiquity.”
Moreover, we are told that “in our own marriages the ‘best man’ seems
originally to have been the chief abettor of the bridegroom in the act
of capture.”
In a modified form “wife-capture” cannot be said to be extinct even in
this advanced age. Elopement is the modern name for it When the parents
dissent and the couple are very young, this climax of courtship
doubtless is often reprehensible. But in those cases where the consent
of all parties has been obtained, it ought to be universally adopted.
Sudden flight and an impromptu marriage would add much to the romance of
the honeymoon, and would enable the bridal couple to avoid the terrors
and stupid formalities of the wedding-day, the anticipation of which is
doubtless responsible for the ever-increasing number of cowardly
bachelors in the world.
(2) _Purchase_ represents a somewhat higher stage of Courtship than
Capture. Like Capture this custom has existed among the peoples of the
five continents, and is still retained in some parts of Africa and
elsewhere. In Holstein, Germany, it prevailed in all its purity,
according to Ploss, till the end of the fifteenth century. Nor would it
be doing facts great violence to class our frequent money-marriages
under this head.
There are two grades of the custom of Purchase. In the first the girl
has no choice whatever, but is sold by her father for so many cows or
camels, in some cases to the highest bidder. Among the Turcomans a wife
may be purchased for five camels if she be a girl, or for fifty if a
widow; whereas among the Tunguse a girl costs one to twenty reindeer,
while widows are considerably cheaper. In the second class of cases the
purchased girl is allowed a certain degree of liberty of choice, as we
shall see directly, under the head of Individual Preference.
(3) _Service._—On the custom of securing a wife by means of services
rendered her parents, Mr. Spencer remarks: “The practice which Hebrew
tradition acquaints us with in the case of Jacob, proves to be a
widely-diffused practice. It is general with the Bhils, Ghonds, and Hill
tribes of Nepaul; it obtained in Java before Mahometanism was
introduced; it was common in ancient Peru and Central America; and among
sundry existing American races it still occurs. Obviously, a wife long
laboured for is likely to be more valued than one stolen or bought.
Obviously, too, the period of service, during which the betrothed girl
is looked upon as a future spouse, affords room for the growth of some
feeling higher than the merely instinctive—initiates something
approaching to the courtship and engagement of civilised peoples.”