marriage, and the girl was spoken of as a bride.[69] These terms so applied point to a belief like that of the Siamese, that a girl’s first menstruation results from her defloration by one of a host of aerial spirits, and that the wound thus inflicted is repeated afterwards every month by the same ghostly agency.[70] For a like reason, probably, the Baganda imagine that a woman who does not menstruate exerts a malign influence on gardens and makes them barren[71] if she works in them.  For not being herself fertilized by a spirit, how can she fertilize the garden?

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes of the Tanganyika plateau.]

Among the Amambwe, Winamwanga, Alungu, and other tribes of the great plateau to the west of Lake Tanganyika, “when a young girl knows that she has attained puberty, she forthwith leaves her mother’s hut, and hides herself in the long grass near the village, covering her face with a cloth and weeping bitterly.  Towards sunset one of the older women—­who, as directress of the ceremonies, is called nachimbusa—­ follows her, places a cooking-pot by the cross-roads, and boils therein a concoction of various herbs, with which she anoints the neophyte.  At nightfall the girl is carried on the old woman’s back to her mother’s hut.  When the customary period of a few days has elapsed, she is allowed to cook again, after first whitewashing the floor of the hut.  But, by the following month, the preparations for her initiation are complete.  The novice must remain in her hut throughout the whole period of initiation, and is carefully guarded by the old women, who accompany her whenever she leaves her quarters, veiling her head with a native cloth.  The ceremonies last for at least one month.”  During this period of seclusion, drumming and songs are kept up within the mother’s hut by the village women, and no male, except, it is said, the father of twins, is allowed to enter.  The directress of the rites and the older women instruct the young girl as to the elementary facts of life, the duties of marriage, and the rules of conduct, decorum, and hospitality to be observed by a married woman.  Amongst other things the damsel must submit to a series of tests such as leaping over fences, thrusting her head into a collar made of thorns, and so on.  The lessons which she receives are illustrated by mud figures of animals and of the common objects of domestic life.  Moreover, the directress of studies embellishes the walls of the hut with rude pictures, each with its special significance and song, which must be understood and learned by the girl.[72] In the foregoing account the rule that a damsel at puberty may neither see the sun nor touch the ground seems implied by the statement that on the first discovery of her condition she hides in long grass and is carried home after sunset on the back of an old woman.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes of British Central Africa.]