When the kind nymph would coyness feign,
     And hides but to be found again,

indicate the nature of true coyness better than any definitions.  There are no “coy looks,” no “feigning” in the actions of an Australian girl about to be married to a man who is old enough to be her grandfather.  The “cold disdain” is real, not assumed, and there is no “dissemblance of feminine affection.”

CAPTURING WOMEN

The same reasoning applies to the customs attending wife-capturing in general, which has prevailed in all parts of the world and still prevails in some regions.  To take one or two instances of a hundred that might be cited from books of travel in all parts of the world:  Columbus relates that the Caribs made the capture of women the chief object of their expeditions.  The California Indians worked up their warlike spirit by chanting a song the substance of which was, “let us go and carry off girls” (Waitz, IV., 242).  Savages everywhere have looked upon women as legitimate spoils of war, desirable as concubines and drudges.  Now even primitive women are attached to their homes and relatives, and it is needless to say their resistance to the enemy who has just slain their father and brothers and is about to carry them off to slavery, is genuine, and has no more trace of coyness in it than the actions of an American girl who resists the efforts of unknown kidnappers to drag her from her home.

But besides real capture of women there has existed, and still exists in many countries, what is known as sham-capture—­a custom which has puzzled anthropologists sorely.  Herbert Spencer illustrates it (P.S., I., Sec. 288) by citing Crantz, who says, concerning the Eskimos, that when a damsel is asked in marriage, she

“directly falls into the greatest apparent consternation, and runs out of doors tearing her hair; for single women always affect the utmost bashfulness and aversion to any proposal of marriage, lest they should lose their reputation for modesty.”

Spencer also quotes Burckhardt, who describes how the bride among Sinai Arabs defends herself with stones, even though she does not dislike the lover; “for according to custom, the more she struggles, bites, kicks, cries, and strikes, the more she is applauded ever after by her own companions.”  During the procession to the husband’s camp “decency obliges her to cry and sob most bitterly.”  Among the Araucanians of Chili, according to Smith (215) “it is a point of honor with the bride to resist and struggle, however willing she may be.”