The pagan tribes of Borneo - Get a Free Blog Here

74 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap.
likely to prove happy. Many young men of the
upper class marry girls of the same class belonging
to neighbouring villages of their own people, and
in some cases this choice falls on a girl of a village
of some other tribe. A marriage of the latter kind
is often encouraged by the chiefs and elder people,
in order to strengthen or to restore friendly relations
between the villages.
The initiative is taken in nearly all cases by the
youth. He begins by paying attentions somewhat
furtively to the girl who attracts his fancy. He
will often be found passing the evening in her
company in her parents' room. There he will
display his skill with the keluri, or the Jew's harp,
or sing the favourite love-song of the people,
varying the words to suit the occasion. If the girl
looks with favour on his advances, she manages to
make the fact known to him. Politeness demands
that in any case he shall be supplied by the women
with lighted cigarettes. If the girl wishes him to
stay, she gives him a cigarette tied in a peculiar
manner, namely by winding the strip which confines
its sheath of dried banana leaf close to the narrow
mouth-piece ; whereas on all other occasions this
strip is wound about the middle of the cigarette.
The young man thus encouraged will repeat his
visits. If his suit makes progress, he may hope
that the fair one will draw out with a pair of brass
tweezers the hairs of his eyebrows and lashes, while
he reclines on his back with his head in her lap.
If these hairs are very few, the girl will remark that
some one else has been pulling them out, an
imputation which he repudiates. Or he complains
of a headache, and she administers scalp-massage by
winding tufts of hair about her knuckles and sharply
tugging them. When the courtship has advanced
to this stage, the girl may attract her suitor to the
room by playing on the Jew's harp, with which she