STRANGE WORLD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 60, 3 June 1942, Page 3

STRANGE WORLD

Jamaica. At weddings among the natives in Jamaica one very important person is always invited. He collects money from, the guests. Ho usually tells a tale of a beautiful princess held for ransom in a hostile country . . . and begs, do-' mands, cajoles and appropriates every penny that the guests have. When he has it all, he wraps the money in a large white handkerchief —and presents it to the bride amid cheers and applause. His reward is a drink. Transvaal. A South African native queen has twenty "wives." She is the all-powerful Queen Modjadji who rules over the Balobedu tribe in the mountain fastness of Transvaal . The twenty "wives" who live with the queen, ministering to her wants, are official, but the queen's one husband is not. He must, by tribal law, remain anonymous. His identity is j kept so secret that it is death to find out who he is. Since he isi not a lawful husband, he can never try to claim the throne. The husbands of the queen's twenty "wives" am equally obscure. The "wives" are officially married to the queen, so that if she dies without leaving a daughter, a daughter of one of her "wives" can inherit the throne. In this way the women keep on ruling and never give the men a chance.

Burma. Buddhist Burma,ns, who don't believe in killing living creatures, have evolved an ingenious way to> catch fish. One day a Burman prince explained it to* me. Bending over the water, he said: "See that light at the bottom of the river? It's simply a slab of wood, painted white, and pllaced there by a native fisherman. It glows strangely in the light of the moon, and the fish, frightened, leap into the a i r —to' fall, back into' the net. It is then possible for the fishermen to assuage their consciences by saying: 'We didn't kill these fish—we simply gathered in the suicides.'"