An Old Custom at a Marquesan Wedding

Mr, Fred Johnson, writing from Atuona in the Marquesas, tells of an interesting old marriage custom that was revived there recently on the occasion of the marriage of Miss Tina Tissot, daughter of Alfred Tissot, manager for Etablisse ments Donald, to Edmond Teii Heita, plantation owner at nearby Taaoa.

Preparations for the marriage were begun two months before the ceremony.

An eating house to seat 300 persons was erected, and when the great day arrived pigs were donated by friends and well wishers, cakes were baked in every home.

Alfred Tissot, father of the bride, spent the greater part of the final night mixing

a wine barrel full of a smooth but power ful punch, while nearby native ovens smoked and steamed as the pigs, chickens,

bananas, breadfruit, stuffed fish and taro leaves were cooked to a turn.

At the wedding ceremony an ancient practice, rarely seen to-day, was enacted, the bride stepping over her prostrate male relatives and the groom likewise stepping over his female relatives, with the flower girls, bridesmaids and bride groom’s attendants following them, as the photograph shows.

At the marriage feast, 50 people waited on table and were kept hustling all night; then, at dawn, the labourers took to the dance floor—an area of boards laid in the open air, while the exhausted guests rested. An orchestra of guitars, coconut lelels, and other instruments— and an unending supply of punch—kept the party humming all through the blaz ing sunshine of three days and the star light of three nights, before a halt was finally called.

M. Tissot, representative for five years for the northern Marquesas district in the Assembly of Tahiti, and an employee of Donalds for the past 15 years, is a friend of every yachtsman that ever shows up at Atuona.

The prime purpose of eloquence is to keep other people from speak

ing.—Louis Verneuil.