In his book on Southern Abyssinia Johnston relates how, while staying at Murroo, he was strongly recommended to follow the example of his companions and take a temporary wife.  There was no need of hunting for helpmates—­they offered themselves of their own accord.  One of the girls who presented herself as a candidate was stated by her friends to be a very strong woman, who had already had four or five husbands.  “I thought this a rather strange recommendation,” he adds, “but it was evidently mentioned that she might find favor in my eyes.”  He found that the best way out of such a dilemma was to engage the first old hag that came along and leave it to her to ward off the others.  Masculine coyness under such conditions has its risks.  Johnston mentions the case of an Arab who, in the region of the Muzeguahs, scorned a girl who wanted to be his temporary wife; whereupon “the whole tribe asserted he had treated them with contempt by his haughty conduct toward the girl, and demanded to know if she was not good enough for him.”  He had to give them some brass wire and blue sood before he could allay the national indignation aroused by his refusal to take the girl.  Women have rights which must be respected, even in Africa!

In Dutch Borneo there is a special kind of “marriage by stratagem” called matep.  If a girl desires a particular man he is inveigled into her house, the door is shut, the walls are hung with cloth of different colors and other ornaments, dinner is served up and he is informed of the girl’s wish to marry him.  If he declines, he is obliged to pay the value of the hangings and the ornaments. (Roth, II., CLXXXI.)

“Uncertain, coy, and hard to please” obviously cannot be sung of such women.

In one of the few native Australian stories on record the two wives of a man are represented as going to his brother’s hut when he was asleep, and imitating the voice of an emu.  The noise woke him, and he took his spear to kill them; but as soon as he ran out the two women spoke and requested him to be their husband. (Wood’s Native Tribes, 210.)

The fact that Australian women have absolutely no choice in the assignment of husbands, must make them inclined to offer themselves to men they like, just as Indian girls offer themselves to noted warriors in the hope of thus calling attention to their personal attractions.  As we shall see later, one of the ways in which an Australian wins a wife is by means of magic.  In this game, as Spencer and Gillen tell us (556), the women sometimes take the initiative, thus inducing a man to elope with them.

WERE HEBREW AND GREEK WOMEN COY?