COURTSHIP IN OTHER LANDS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1436, 10 May 1912, Page 9

COURTSHIP IN OTHER LANDS.

"The way of a man with a maid" is always a thing worth noting; also tha various methods of courtship which prevail in different parts of the world. According to the nationality cf your best girl, your courtship system should be organised. in ltumania once every year a fair of marriageable girls is held. The girl with her relatives gets into a wagon, which also contains Her dowry—linen, furniture, and household goods—and all set off for the fair. Wheii they arrive the girls are all drawn up in one line and the men in another, with their parents behind them. Then, if a young mau likes tho look of i any particular girl, he steps out of tho line, goes up to her, and enters info talk I with her, while his parents and her | parents compare notes as to their possessions' and circumstances m life. If all is found satisfactory, the couple are married then and there, and the bride is driven away by her husband to her new home. . The custom in Russia is very much the same. Oil Whitsunday afternoon the girl, dressed in her best clothes, is taken by her parents to the Winter Gardi-ns in - the nearest largo town, where she meets a number of young men walking up and j down on the look-out for wives. | The girl carries in her hand a silver spoon, a piece of embroidery, or some other valued household possession to shmv that she is a person of property, and the voung man brings with him as many roubles as ho has been able to save, it tho parents see that a young man is attracted by a girl, she is promptly handed over to a woman who is a sort ot marnr.gs a-ent, and whose business it is to introduce the couple, and make arrangements about the dowry. In Japan it is not wise tor a young man to neglect the maid he is courting. When a Japanese girl has been slighted bv her lover, she avenges hcrseli accordto the following quaint custom. In the dawn of the early morning .she rises, nu's on a white rolie, and white clogs. Bound her neck she hangs a small mirror, which falls on her breast, <""! ° n ., h f head she puts a metal crown with three points, each point bearing a lighted |Ca in'her left hand she carries a small figure of straw or rags-supposed to rcwescat her unfatfhfal lover-and this sho nails to one of the sacred tree's suircimding the family shrine. She .hen pravs for the death of the man, vowing that, if this comes to pass, she will pull out the nails which are hurting the sacred free and make offerings to comfort her familv god. Every night she comes to the shrine, strikes in two more nails, and makes the same prayer her idea being that the god, to save his tree from further injury, will kill her lover.