it their
husbands to see them unveiled for three years after their marriage.' {72}

In his 'Travels to Timbuctoo' (i. 94), Caillie says that the bridegroom
'is not allowed to see his intended during the day.' He has a tabooed
hut apart, and 'if he is obliged to come out he covers his face.' He
'remains with his wife only till daybreak'--like Cupid--and flees, like
Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity
such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never
seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo.
{73a}

Among the Yorubas 'conventional modesty forbids a woman to speak to her
husband, or even to see him, if it can be avoided.' {73b} Of the
Iroquois Lafitau says: 'Ils n'osent aller dans les cabanes particulieres
ou habitent leurs epouses que durant l'obscurite de la nuit.' {73c} The
Circassian women live on distant terms with their lords till they become
mothers. {73d} Similar examples of reserve are reported to be customary
among the Fijians.

In backward parts of Europe a strange custom forbids the bride to speak
to her lord, as if in memory of a time when husband and wife were always
of alien tribes, and, as among the Caribs, spoke different languages.

In the Bulgarian 'Volkslied,' the Sun marries Grozdanka, a mortal girl.
Her mother addresses her thus:--

Grozdanka, mother's treasure mine,
For nine long years I nourished thee,
For nine months see thou do not speak
To thy first love that marries thee.

M. Dozon, who has collected the Bulgarian songs, says that this custom of
prolonged silence on the part of the bride is very common in Bulgaria,
though it is beginning to yield to a sense of the ludicrous. {74a} In
Sparta and in Crete, as is well known, the bridegroom was long the victim
of a somewhat similar taboo, and was only permitted to seek the company
of his wife secretly, and in the dark, like the Iroquois described by
Lafitau.

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 tal