Field and Hedgerow: Being the Last Essays of Richard JefferiesJefferies, Richard
History
Field and Hedgerow: Being the Last Essays of Richard Jefferies
Jefferies, Richard
England -- Description and travel; Natural history
in the East to the priests, who take up their residence indefinitely, and
are treated as visible incarnations of the Deity whose appetites it is
meritorious to satisfy. Indeed, these young men, who have perhaps been
trained as missionaries, often discourse of Buddha with a very long and
unctuous 'Boo.'
The ancient Roman censor who tried by laws and persuasions to induce the
inhabitants of Rome to marry, yet could not succeed in inducing them to
submit to what they considered a sacrifice for the benefit of the state,
would have been delighted with the marrying tendencies of the chapel
people. A venerable old gentleman--a great pillar of the body--after the
decease of his first wife married her sister, and again, upon her
removal, married his cook. Another great prop--elderly indeed, but still
upright and iron-grey, a most powerfully made man, who always spoke as if
his words were indeed law--rule-of-thumb law--has married three sisters
in succession, and has had offspring by all. Their exact degrees of
consanguinity I cannot tell you, or whether they call each other brothers
and sisters, or cousins. This is certain, however, that whether such
marriages be legal or not, they are as such regarded and as such accepted
in every sense by the society to which these gentlemen belong. Another
gentleman now has his fourth wife, and he, too, is a most strenuous
believer, and not his bitterest enemy can rake up the smallest accusation
against his character. He, too, is a strong and upright man, fully
capable of another wife if time should chance to bring it about. Now, the
odd part of it is that, having married four times, and each time in the
same village, where all the families are more or less connected, he is
more or less related to every single individual in the parish. First,
there are his own blood relations and his wives' blood relations, and
then there are their relations' relations, and next his sons and
daughters have married and introduced a fresh roll, and I really do not
think either he or anybody else knows exactly where the list ends. This
is nothing uncommon. Though clans and tribes no longer settle under their
respective chiefs in villages, the families of the same name and blood
still present a very close representation of the clan system. They have
all the tribal relationship without any of its feeling. Instead of
forming a strong body and helping each other, these people seemed to
detest one another, and to lose no opportunity of snatching some little
advantage or telling some scandalous tale. In fact, this in-and-in
breeding seems one of the curses of village life, and a cause of
stagnation and narrowness of mind. This marrying and giving in marriage
is not singular to well-to-do leaders of chapel society, but goes on with
equal fervour among the lower members. The cottage girls and cottage boys
marry the instant they get a chance, and it is not at all uncommon to
find comparatively young labourers who have had two wives. There is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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