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Access to land and labour

3.5. Bypassing the fathers

Young people had various options to enforce a marriage upon their respective families. The initiative could come from either the girl or the boy.85 It is important to note that, for all parties concerned, the social and material consequences of such marriages were different from an arranged marriage that had been preceded by formal negotiations on marriage payments.

In the first scenario a girl would leave the house of her father—literally step down the stairs (maiturun) of her father’s house—and go up the stairs (mahiempe) of the house of the man she wanted to marry her.86 Walking over to the house of her beloved was a strategy to speed up the negotiations on marriage payments which had not yet started or had ended in deadlock because either the girl’s father (parboru) or the father of the boy (paranak) was not in favour of the marriage. By walking over to her sweetheart’s house, the daughter deprived her father of the power to set his conditions during the negotiations about the marriage payments. She was already ‘in the bag’, so to speak, and therefore the bridetaker (paranak) could have his terms more easily accepted.87 A girl could also resort to mahiempe to put pressure on her beloved and his reluctant family to start the negotiations about the brideprice. If, for example, she was pregnant, she would want her boyfriend and his parents to assume their responsibilities.88 Yet another reason to go to her lover’s house was a girl’s wish to escape an imminent arranged marriage with someone else (Patik 1898 [tr. Boer 1921: 84]).

The act of mahiempe not only influenced the negotiations about the brideprice to the disadvantage of the parboru; it was also bound to influence the relationship between the daughter, her father, and the rest of her family. The author of Patik describes how her parents might react if she came to visit her parental home after her marriage: ‘how dare you come to us with your requests, you have given the advantage to others [at the time of the negotiation about the marriage payments. SvB], you’d better go there!’ The daughter would then lament:

sex occurred frequently, it always took place between young people who had a steady relationship. His main source was his ‘boy’ of seventeen.

85 VEM F/b 1 KP 1883:333; F/d 2,1 Ref.Volkmann 1893: 8-9. Patik [tr. Vergouwen] 1932:5-7. It is curious that the author of Ruhut does not mention marriage by the agency of young people.

86 Maiturun is derived from turun (Warneck 1977:278), which also in Malay means ‘to descend’. The Translation of mahiempe (also found spelled as mahuempe) is ‘to walk up to the house of a man, said of a girl’ (Warneck (1977: 80).

Among the Karo Batak the custom is known as nangkih (Kipp 1986:640).

87 Patik [tr. Vergouwen] 1932:5.

88 According to Nasution (1943:67), a girl who could show the gifts she had received from her lover as proof of their engagement was sometimes supported by the villagers, who pressured her lover to marry her. Apparently men usually married the woman whom they had got with child: the sources mention mainly widows who had given birth to children born out of wedlock (Vergouwen [1933] 1964:268; Helbig:1935:23).

the leaf of the sihampir becomes my betel leaf, o mother, the tandiang fern has become red spider mite,

my father will not accept my request

and my mother does not want to receive me!”

(Patik 1899 [tr. Vergouwen1932:5])

Things would be different if a girl walked to the house of a man on the instigation of her own father (Vergouwen [1933] 1964:215). This might happen if she was pregnant by a man of a more prominent family than her own.

A young man also could take the initiative to marry: he could abduct the woman of his choice, either with her consent or by force. The author of Patik reports that if a man had this intention, he had to inform the raja of his village first. They would explain to him that if he abducted the woman, the father of the girl had the right to determine the brideprice and was entitled to a variety of compensations, since the abductor had deprived him of his customary right to arrange the marriage of his daughter. After the man had assured the raja of his village that he would honour the rules, he would set out with a couple of friends to seize the girl—or fetch her, if she had agreed to go along with his plan. After they had got the girl, the gang would return to the village and ask the gondang orchestra to play as a sign of the successful undertaking, and the girl was brought into the house of her abductor. The next day her parboru would come to the village in the company of a number of relatives. The following conversation among the indignant father (parboru), the abductor, and the rajas of the parboru’s village, recorded by author of Patik (1899), highlights that abduction was regarded as an almost criminal offence, for which various types of compensation were expected:89

Parboru: ‘Where is my daughter whom you have stolen, my friend?’

Abductor: ‘I have not stolen her, sir. I wish to keep your daughter with me as my wife. She is already seated in the main room of the house and has already been given a nice clean mat.

Please, take a seat, sir.’

Parboru: ‘O no, I don’t want to take a seat! I want to take my daughter home right now, because if it is true that you are so fond of her, you could have visited me at my home, because I have a decent house and rice barn (sopo). Your act is pure arbitrariness!’

Abductor: ‘As I have indeed acted as you say, sir, I wish to do everything in my power to satisfy your demands as long as it is in within the limits of our law.’

Parboru’s village chief: (Addressing the abductor)

‘If you want to bow to the punishment for your act in haste […], then pay us first the compensation for taking a seat (upa hundul) so we can sit down and put our spears at rest.’

[The abductor gives the parboru a piece of gold as compensation and invites him and the others in the company to a meal, putting a basin filled with water in front of them to wash their hands.]

Parboru: ‘No, we do not wish to wash our hands before you have given us the compensation for doing so (upa marjomuk).’

[The abductor then gives the parboru a piece of ‘old gold’ and the company wash their

89 As for what is said by the speakers, I have translated the Dutch text in Patik [tr. De Boer] 1921:85-7, although with different punctuation. The rest of the text is shortened.

hands and he invites them to eat. But this, too, is not immediately accepted.]

Parboru: ‘We will not start eating unless you have given the compensation for taking this meal, the upa mangan’.

[The abductor then gives the parboru a beautiful necklace and everyone starts to eat. Only they have finished their meal do the two parties start the negotiations about the marriage payments.

After both parties have come to an agreement, the brideprice is handed over, while the shares meant for the relatives of the parboru are divided amongst themselves and the village rajas are given the upa raja (fee for their obligatory presence). The parboru may give a counter-gift, the ragiragi. The last part of the ceremony consists of concluding the marriage between the abducted woman and her abductor].

The author of Patik says little about the disposition of the girl towards her abductor. He mentions only that if she had been carried off against her will, she might try to escape to her father’s village. If she succeeded, the abductor would become the laughing stock of the village. But the author leaves us in the dark about what would happen if she had been unable to run away.90 Presumably the author intended to emphasize that abduction meant that the paranak had to make large sacrifices to prevent a conflict with the aggrieved parboru. For the negotiations about the brideprice and the fines to be paid by the paranak, it made no difference whether the abduction had taken place with or without the girl’s consent.91

An abducted daughter’s fate depended on the decision taken by her parboru. He might be inclined to consent to the marriage if the abductor was willing to pay the fines and brideprice he demanded, in particular if the daughter had not yet been betrothed to anyone else, because the girl was usually raped (or deflowered with her consent) immediately after her abduction.

Rape without abduction could also lead to marriage, if the parboru agreed to it (Vergouwen [1933] 1964: 211-3; 215-6). But if a father decided to take his daughter home, the abductor had to apologize to him in front of the rajas and the village elders, and slaughter a buffalo and offer the parboru and his party a meal, in order to avoid war. The girl was entitled to compensation for her ritual purification and to cover the shame the abductor had brought on her.92

If a man abducted a girl without informing his village chief in advance, he ran the risk of being handed over by the rajas of his own village to the young men of the girl’s village, who might beat him up badly. But his own father, the paranak, was not expected to be harsh on his son, even if he had not agreed with the abduction. He usually swallowed his pride and paid for all the damages, because ‘a son who put his father at a disadvantage is not to be sold’.93 The abduction of a girl, in view of the high fines, probably was an option open mainly to young men of rich families who were confident that these fines would eventually be paid by their father (Vergouwen [1933] 1964:212).

90 An anonymous missionary relates the story of a girl who was taken from her mother’s shed by force. The girl fled to the forest where she lost her way. After six weeks a villager found her. Her mother became Christian after that (‘Gebet einer Heidin’ 1863, Kleine Missionsfreund 9: 14-16).

91 The adat regulations of Naipospos (region between Toba and the west coast) stipulate a similar course of events. This manuscript is part of the collection of Batak manuscripts of H. Neubronner van der Tuuk who lived in Barus between 1852 and 1857. Parts were translated by Vergouwen (Adatrechtsregelen 1932:135-139).

92 The regulation was still practiced in 1922 in the sub-district of Sibolga (Dorpstuchtrecht 1928:67).

93 Ypes (1932:403) writes that among the Dairi Batak a young man could even take cattle and gold from his father and go to the girl’s father to pay the brideprice on his own accord.

Although the rules for the proper procedure for abduction were intended to achieve a peaceful settlement, the practice was sometimes quite messy. Missionary Brakensiek, who worked on Samosir around 1900 when the island had not yet been brought under colonial rule, recorded two cases of the abduction of a betrothed girl that both ended tragically.94 The first case concerned a girl from Urat on the island of Samosir, who had an affair with a man from Tambak on the other side of the Lake and fled across the lake with him. Her fiancé, extremely offended, refused to accept this, and threatened the girl’s father with war. The cornered parboru then asked for mediation by the rajas and returned the advance of the brideprice he had already received, plus the additional fine for breaking off the engagement. After that, the young woman and her lover dared to return to Urat to make the proper arrangements for their marriage. But although the girl’s father had promised to guarantee the safety of his daughter’s lover, he broke this promise immediately upon the latter’s arrival. He tied the poor fellow up, took the money and gold the lover had brought to pay the brideprice, and turned him over to the former fiancé of his daughter. The angry fiancé had no pity on his rival, who was tied to the pole in the centre of the village square and horribly mutilated. He died the next day.

The second story concerned the daughter of a raja in Nainggolan on Samosir, who had become pregnant as the result of a love affair while she was betrothed to another man. When the time of delivery came near, her lover paid the brideprice to her father. The father accepted the sum, but then made life so miserable for the couple that they decided to flee the village.

Missionary Brakensiek suspected the father had done this deliberately, to have an excuse not to settle the return of the advance of the brideprice with the discarded fiancé of his daughter. In the dark of night the former fiancé sneaked into the parboru’s village with a gang of followers to attack him. The father succeeded warding off the attack, chased the gang, and managed to kill one of the members. The end of the story was the loss of the brideprice for the discarded fiancé, plus the loss of a human life.

These two cases show that abduction could take place with the consent of the girl.95 In both cases the term ‘abduction’ seems less appropriate; ‘elopement’ is more fitting. But traditional Batak customary law did not make this distinction: what counted was the fact that a man’s right vested in the woman was violated. In the first case, the parboru had been deprived of his right to arrange the marriage for his daughter; in the second case, the fiancé was deprived by the parboru of his right to claim the daughter already betrothed to him. Considering that abduction was a costly affair and involved the risk that an offended parboru might take violent action against the abductor or his village, it seems improbable that many men dared to abduct a woman. Yet cases did occur, and it is probably for that reason that abduction was included in the regulations for Batak Christians formulated by the missionaries and Toba Batak Christian rajas in 1884.96

94 VEM, F/b 2,1 Ref. Brakensiek 1911:4-5. One reason why the father might have been particularly furious was that, according to Brakensiek, he had had to pay 90 thaler to the aggrieved fiancé, three times the amount of the advance on the brideprice his daughter’s lover had brought him.

95 In Toba a girl might take three woven cloths (ulos) with her before being abducted, which indicated that she was privy to the plan (Dorpstuchtrecht 1928:85).

96 Chapter 8. page 1.