“the proposer is entitled (on payment of $5 each time) to private interviews with his fiancee to enable him by a closer inspection to judge better of her personal charms.  But it frequently happens that the young man squanders all his money on these ‘interviews’ before paying the dafa agreed upon.  The girl then (at her parents’ instigation) breaks off the match, and her father, when expostulated with, replies that he will not force his daughter’s inclinations.  Hence arise innumerable breach-of-promise-of-marriage suits, in which the man is invariably the plaintiff.  I have known instances of a girl being betrothed to three or four different men in about a year’s time, their father receiving a certain amount of dafa from each suitor."[149]

Donaldson Smith remarks (12) that Somali women “are regarded merely as goods and chattels.  In a conversation with one of my boys he told me that he only owned five camels, but that he had a sister from whom he expected to get much money when he sold her in marriage.”  The gross commercialism of Somali love-affairs is further illustrated by the Ogaden custom (Paulitschke, E.N.A., 199) of pouring strong perfumes over the bride in order to stimulate the ardor of the suitor and make him willing to pay more for her—­a trick which is often successful.  How, under such circumstances, Somal marriages can be “mostly based on cordial mutual affection” is a mystery for Dr. Paulitschke to explain.  Burton proved himself a keener observer and psychologist when he wrote (F.F., 122), “The Somal knows none of the exaggerated and chivalrons ideas by which passion becomes refined affection among the Arab Bedouins and the sons of civilization.”  I may add what this writer says regarding Somal poetry: 

“The subjects are frequently pastoral; the lover, for instance, invites his mistress to walk with him toward the well in Lahelo, the Arcadia of the land; he compares her legs to the tall, straight Libi tree, and imprecates the direst curses on her head if she refuses to drink with him the milk of his favorite camel.”

ARABIC INFLUENCES

The Harari, neighbors of the Somals, are another people among whom Paulitschke fancied that he discovered signs of idealized love (B.E.A.S., 70).  Their youthful attachments, he says, are intense and noble, and in proof of this he translates two of their poems on the beauty of a bride.

I.  “I tell thee this only:  thy face is like silk, Aisa; I say it again, I tell thee nothing but that.  Thou art slender as a lance-shaft; thy father and thy mother are Arabs; they all are Arabs; I tell thee this only.”

II.  “Thy form is like a burning lamp, Aisa; I love thee.  When thou art at the side of Abrahim, thou burnest him with the light of thy beauty.  To-morrow I shall see thee again.”

In a third (freely translated and printed in the appendix of the same volume) occur these lines: