At the wedding the bride hides somewhere and has to be found or carried off by the bridegroom or his brother.

This ritualistic display of grief and coyness appears to be of considerable interest.

It cannot be explained by the girl's reluctance to marriage as involving the loss of her virginity, inasmuch as she is still frequently not a virgin at her wedding, and to judge from the analogy of other tribes, could seldom or never have been one a few generations back.

Nor is affection for her family or grief at the approaching separation from them a satisfactory motive.

This would not account for the hiding at all, and not properly for the weeping, since she will after all only live a few miles away and will often return home; and sometimes she does not only weep at her own house but at all the houses of the village.