Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
Herodotus tells us (i. 146) that some of the old Ionian colonists
'brought no women with them, but took wives of the women of the
Carians, whose fathers they had slain. Therefore the women made a law
for themselves, and handed it down to their daughters, that they
should never sit at meat with their husbands, and _that none should
ever call her husband by his name_.' In precisely the same way, in
Zululand the wife may not mention her husband's name, just as in the
Welsh fairy tale the husband may not even know the name of his fairy
bride, on pain of losing her for ever. These ideas about names, and
freakish ways of avoiding the use of names, mark the childhood of
languages, according to Mr. Max Müller,[74] and, therefore, the
childhood of Society. The Kaffirs call this etiquette 'Hlonipa.' It
applies to women as well as men. A Kaffir bride is not called by her
own name in her husband's village, but is spoken of as 'mother of so
and so,' even before she has born a child. The universal superstition
about names is at the bottom of this custom. The Aleutian Islanders,
according to Dall, are quite distressed when obliged to speak to their
wives in the presence of others. The Fijians did not know where to
look when missionaries hinted that a man might live under the same
roof as his wife.[75] Among the Turkomans, for six months, a year, or
two years, a husband is only allowed to visit his wife by stealth.
The number of these instances could probably be increased by a little
research. Our argument is that the widely distributed myths in which a
husband or a wife transgresses some 'custom'--sees the other's face or
body, or utters the forbidden name--might well have arisen as tales
illustrating the punishment of breaking the rule. By a very curious
coincidence, a Breton sailor's tale of the 'Cupid and Psyche' class is
confessedly founded on the existence of the rule of nuptial
etiquette.[76]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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