Access to land and labour
3.4. Courtship and premarital sexual relations
The girl:
My teeth were filed yesterday You know that it hurts Although my face is swollen
Please come close, I am tang (ready) 67 (Helbig 1935:35)
The boy:
Butterflies sit in the coconut trees in Siboga
The singkoru plant stretches upward, I pull it with my left hand My cousin (pariban) passes by, I want to address her
(and) ask for a leaf of gambir and a mat to sleep on 68 (Ruhut 1898 [tr. Meerwaldt 1904/5:280])
The moment a girl and a boy were considered marriageable and ready for courtship was initiated by the tooth-filing ceremony.69 During this ceremony, the teeth were filed to an even length and blackened. This rite de passage usually took place at the age of ten or eleven and was led by a datu, on which occasion a buffalo or cow was slaughtered (Brenner 1894:247). After this transition into puberty, young people engaged in courtship to find a mate. It was considered improper for a girl to take the initiative in courting. The myth of the origin of mankind conveys this message: nothing good could come of Si Boru Surbajati’s and Si Boru Deak Parujar’s betrothal because they went to court Raja EndaEnda in his village, whereas it should have been the reverse: ‘The ladder should be brought to the sugar palm, not the other way round’. The initiative must come from the man’s side.
A favourite place for young men to go and look for girls was the market.70 Customs with regard to clothing helped him to know which girls were single. Girls used to wear a jacket
Lake Toba, where customs were still ‘rough’.
67 Tang means ‘ripe’ = ready for courting. Helbig also quotes other love poems, likewise Braasem (1951:76-84).
68 Note the term of address used by the boy for the girl, referring to her as his cross-cousin (pariban).
69 A detailed description of a tooth-filing ceremony is given by Guillaume (1903) for the Karo Batak, with a few references to Toba. The main difference mentioned is that in Karo the ceremony was public at the time, while the ceremony in Toba took place in the forest (in the ‘wild’, Chapter 1:13).
70 Vergouwen [1933] 1964: 167; Salomo 1938:18-9.
RMV, no. A56-40-41-42. Photograph by E. Modigliani 13. Young woman, Si Suralaga (1890)
RMV, no. A56-61-62-63. Photograph by E Modigliani 14. Young man, Si Managin (1890)
Source: RMV, no. A14-1-62.
Photograph by K. Feilberg (ca. 1867–1870)
15. Young Batak woman of a rich family (1870)
Clothing, adornments and hair styles: markers of social and marital status
The two photographs above (13 and 14) show two young people with no adornments from the northern part of Toba. The girl wears a simple cloth covering her breasts, the marker that she is still unmarried. The young man wears his hair long and has a bare torso. The photograph on the left (15) from an earlier period, taken by the Danish photographer K.
Feilberg, shows an unmarried young woman of a wealthy family.
She wears more elaborately woven cloths (including a shoulder cloth) and jewelry (earrings, a necklace and rings). Wearing jewelry was also a marker of the unmarried status of women.
TM, no. 10002934. Photograph by Tassilo Adam
16. A Karo Batak girl whose teeth are being filed (ca. 1914–1918)
Winkler 2006:59 (scan)
17. A rich Toba Batak with filed and blackened teeth (adorned with insets of gold)
16. The tooth filing ceremony shown here took place in the Karo Batak region around 1915. The Toba Batak way of filing teeth in an earlier period was probably similar (no picture available).
17. By 1930 about half of the Toba Batak population had not yet converted to Christianity. People who had their teeth filed when they were young must therefore have remained a common sight until the end of the colonial period, like the man in modern clothes in this photograph. The Batak Mission did not forbid the custom outright, but tried to counter the practice by persuasion and example. Over time, the norm that Christians should not have their teeth filed became accepted (See chapter 8, section 8.2)
covering the upper part of the body, for which reason they were called bajubaju, while married women after the birth of their first child wore only a piece of cloth around the hips, leaving their upper bodies bare.71 Besides the market, weddings and funerals also provided excellent opportunities for young people to meet.
Before taking any further steps, the young man would make inquiries about the girl. The first thing he needed to know was the marga to which the girl belonged. If she was of the same marga, it was no use approaching her, because a marriage with her would be out of question.72 It was also essential to know whether she was already engaged. If she was, he had also better leave her alone. But if the girl was of another marga and not yet engaged, the prospects were good, and the young man might decide to go to her village one day. Usually he took a friend or a couple of friends with him. It was customary for young men to visit a gathering of young girls in the latter’s village. This collective prelude to courtship was called martandang. Favourite pastimes were to improvise quatrains, play at riddles, tell stories, and make music together. Sometimes the girls would propose to prepare a meal together the next time, for which they would provide the rice and the boys the meat.73
If a man had made up his mind that he wanted to court a specific girl, he would seek out a go-between (domudomu), usually a female friend of the girl he fancied, to find out whether he had a chance to win her heart. His first message would be covert: ‘There is a plot of forest that I would like to open up, but I am afraid that someone else has already marked it with his knife’
or ‘I would like to buy a pig to fatten it, as long as it is not yet claimed’. If the girl was already engaged or if she was not interested in him, she would let him know through the intermediary in equally veiled phrases. Or he would send over a friend who would ask the girl for some betel leaves (sirih) for him. If she gave some, he would send a sack of sirih in return. Subsequently the couple would meet secretly and exchange tokens of affection—for example, a piece of their clothing. A formal pledge in front of the friends of the couple ultimately sealed their mutual commitment. The young man could offer his beloved a ring, a box for tobacco, or a small sum of money. The girl usually gave an ulos (a woven cloth) in return. In the event that the couple did not marry later on, these gifts had to be returned.74 The next stage of courting usually took place at the girl’s house.
During this period, the young man and woman looked for signs indicating that their union would be blessed or prone to misfortune. The suitor had better not proceed if he encountered any of the following adverse signs:
1. He heard the sound of mourning. It meant the girl would become a young widow (meaning he himself would die young).
2. Someone was busy sweeping the village square. This meant all his possessions would soon vanish.
71 For this reason the first child was also called the ‘opener of the garment’ (Malay: buka baju).
72 On prohibited marriages see Chapter 2, section 2.5.
73 Ruhut 1898 [tr. Meerwaldt 1904/5:277-281]; Vergouwen [1933]1964:166-7; Helbig 1935:25-6; Braasem 1951:105. Lando (1979:80-1) records that verbal virtuosity during courting had disappeared in his research village in Toba, but Rodgers (1990:326-8) found that collective courting still existed in the 1980s, including formal martandang talk with sexual innuendos, although that had become rare. In the past, they often also made music, the young men playing simple flutes while the girls used mouth harps made of iron, copper or the stalk of a sugar palm leaf; but this type of music has disappeared under the influence of Western music (Simon 1984:64).
74 Ruhut [tr. Meerwaldt] 1904/5:288-9; Brenner 1894:248; Vergouwen [1933] 1964:169. The gifts exchanged on this occasion already fall into the official categories of gifts exchanged by hulahula and boru.
3. He found the girl with her hair down or combing it. It meant that she would become a spirit medium (sibaso).75
4. The girl had just started setting up her weaving loom. It meant that both of them would have to work hard if they got married.
5. The girl was about to take the cloth she had woven off the loom, indicating that the means of livelihood would dwindle during the marriage.
6. The head of the girl was accidentally covered by a cloth or a large leaf serving as an umbrella, a sign that she would soon become a widow.
7. The man, born an uneven number in the sequence of his brothers, looked for a bride in an uneven month (the same would hold for a girl and the time of her betrothal). Looking for a wife in the eighth month of the Batak calendar would always be wrong, because that was the time a certain obnoxious spirit (begu panoluk-noluk) wandered about. These signs would be premonitions that the woman would fall ill or become a spirit medium.
(Verschillende verbodsbepalingen [tr. Joustra]1917:312-3)
A good omen, on the other hand, would be when the girl was about to start weaving a cloth or close to finishing it, because it indicated future prosperity.76
A man could also invoke the gods and ask for a sign through a dream. Positive omens were if he dreamt that he was harvesting, or drinking clear water; but if he dreamt that he was working the land or climbing a mountain, he had better retrace his steps.
Likewise it was a good omen if he saw the girl of his choice drawing water from a well or busy weaving. But it was an inauspicious sign if she carried a pickaxe, because that meant she would soon become a widow.77
Of course girls were also keen to know whether a suitor was right for them. The myth of the origin of mankind mentions Si Boru Surbajati’s visiting a sibaso, a female spirit medium, to ask for advice on her betrothal to Raja EndaEnda. The sibaso told her: ‘there is nothing you can do about it, Boru Surbajati, he is destined to accompany you [...] for all time’ (Niessen 1985:28-29). Another person often called upon to find out whether a couple was compatible was the expert on divination, the datu. He scrutinized the names of the boy and girl, as well as various
75 Why having a sibaso for a wife would be unfortunate is not explained.
76 The references in these forebodings to girls working on their loom reflects the importance the Toba Batak attached to this female skill. The weaving loom was the feminine attribute par excellence (Niessen 1985:72).
77 Unfortunately the author of Ruhut and Pandita Jozef did not mention any supernatural signs for a girl to pay attention to!
RMV, no. A56-13. Photograph by E. Modigliani 18. Young woman weaving (1890)
other signs (Warneck 1909: 48). The few references in Ruhut (1898) and Patik (1899) dealing specifically with the considerations of girls are all concerned with quite down-to-earth matters.
For example, a young woman would be interested in whether her suitor’s family possessed paddy fields and dry fields, because it would enable her to make a living easily and earn something. She would also try to find out as much as possible about the character and temper not only of her suitor, but also of her parents-in-law, because ‘whoever is easily enraged, will surely be quickly angry with a daughter-in-law (Ruhut 1898 [tr. Meerwaldt] 1904/5:289]). Prominent in her mind was also the question of whether her prospective groom had brothers or other male relatives, because if he was the only son in the extended family, she would be afraid that no one would replace him if he died.78 This refers to the levirate, remarriage of a widow with a brother or other close relative of her deceased husband, a custom discussed in Chapter 5.
Courting could also include sex. Missionary reports from the nineteenth century abound with references to deplorably low morals and ‘free sex’ practiced by young people.79 Missionary Warneck (1909:22) explained that the frequent occurrence of premarital sex had the purpose of finding out whether a girl could get pregnant. Controller J.J. Fanoy confirmed this for the non-Christian population in Toba, stating that parents encouraged their children to be intimate in the home of the girl. He dryly remarked that it reminded him of the same custom in rural areas in the Netherlands.80 Some authors emphasized that the Toba Batak did not place special value on the virginity of a woman and quoted a Batak saying to underline this point of view: ‘The cookie is not tasty if no fly has ever sat on it’.81 If the girl got pregnant, it was read as a sign that she was the right match for her lover. This proved that their souls were compatible (rongkap ni tondi).82
Nonetheless, sexual permissiveness was not entirely unproblematic. The author of Ruhut—
who otherwise rarely evinced his Christian moral attitude—wrote about the custom with puritan disapproval: ‘There is yet another way of association amongst young people in “Batakdom”, that is the sin of youth between young men and girls, but it is difficult to tell about it since it is actually too improper to mention’. He stressed the risks of premarital sexual intercourse for the girl, sketching a bleak picture of ‘silly’ girls who had been seduced by the promise of marriage, but had been abandoned by their lovers or kept in the dark about the time of the wedding.
He warned that such a wayward girl could become the target of defamation if her intimate relationship became a public secret.83 Yet he added a comforting note: a man could rarely escape the moral pressure to marry a girl whom he had been dating for a long time (Ruhut 1898 [tr.
Meerwaldt 1904:285-7]).84 Courtship usually ended with the request by the young man to his
78 Patik [tr.Vergouwen] 1932:11. The relevant proverb (umpama) is as follows: ‘I do not want to have a singular branch. If it is a langge plant, it will not grow tubers. I therefore do not wish to marry an only son, maybe he dies and there will be no one to replace him’.
79 The Toba region and Samosir had a notorious reputation in this respect, at least compared to South Tapanuli and Silindung; Schreiber 1900b:60; Vergouwen [1933] 1964:191.
80 KITLV, Korn OR 435.416: Letter J.J. Fanoy, Balige 31-10-1923.
81 Henny (1869:40) and Helbig (1935:26) who wrote decades apart, quoted the same proverb. The traveller Brenner (1894:259) wrote quite factually: ‘The Batak does not value the virginity of young women and a young suitor does not ask about the previous life of his bride’.
82 For an elaborate explanation of the term rongkap and it relation to fertility see Warneck (1977:207).
83 If the parents did not agree with the relationship, the couple could be summoned to confess that they had ’taken wrong steps’ (marlangka pilit) in front of their parents and the rajas of their villages (Vergouwen [1933] (1964:170). Was this an old custom or an invention of the missionaries? Usually their marriage would then be arranged on short notice. If the family of the young man was not interested in the marriage, the paranak had to pay a fine to the rajas for the purification ritual incurred by the impropriety, as well as a piso-gift to the father of the girl.
84 Helbig (1935:36), who showed a keen interest in the sexual mores of the Toba Batak states, wrote that although premarital
father to start the customary negotiations about the marriage payments with the father of his girlfriend.
The ample attention given by late nineteenth-century Batak authors to courting is an indication that courtship was a serious matter, not thought of lightly, and that not all marriages were arranged by the parents. It is also apparent that most descriptions focus on male agency.
This may reflect the more active role of men in courtship, but it may also be attributed to the fact that the authors themselves were men.