Joy and grief

Because sons were more valued, it is not surprising that many sources mention that the birth of a male child was generally greeted with more joy than the birth of girl.³⁸ Vergouwen ([1933]1964:221) gives a nice illustration of this: when asked about the sex of the newborn, a father would answer: ‘it is all right’ (tahó ma i). This meant that the child was a boy. If a son was born to a raja, he had to give a feast where the gondang would play.³⁹ The only reason for a father

36 The reason for the corpse being brought out through the stable under the house was to prevent the soul from returning to the house through the front entrance. Van Asselt (1906:130-1, 141) reported that the corpse of the woman was wrapped in an old mat or the fibres of the sugar palm and thrown in a ravine. In the Toba region, one threw the corpse, made heavier with stones, into the lake (Winkler (1937:1337). For a detailed description of a case, see ‘Frauenlos im Heindentum’, Der Meisters Ruf 1911:56-7.

37 See also Junghuhn (1847:136-43) on differences in funeral rites. Henny (1869:29-30) observed a distinction between four types of coffins depending on the status of the deceased. How the body was transported to its grave also differed:

the coffin of the notables was put on a carriage with wheels (probably necessary because the coffin was heavier than that of less prominent people).

38 Ruhut [tr. Meerwaldt] 1904:118. See also the quote in the introduction, page 1.

39 KIT, Batak instituut, doss. 36, C 74, Paper by missionary Pilgram, 1885.

to reject a son was if the child was born on his own birthday according to the Batak calendar.

Missionary Meerwaldt came across such a case. The datu had told the father that he would soon die if he allowed his son to live. The father, frightened to death, and his relatives planned to bury the infant alive, but the mother protested with all her might, took her baby boy with her, and moved to another village. Her husband took another wife.⁴⁰ The position of a married woman in the circle of her family-in-law depended on her having a son. In 1911, missionary Brakensiek wrote: ‘as soon as a child is born and especially if it is a son, the condition of the Batak marriage changes and one can say that henceforward marital life begins in earnest, [because] through the birth of son the position of the woman improves in that she will then be protected and respected’.⁴¹

Girls were greeted with joy, too, but there was some ambivalence. A girl was destined to marry out and ‘strengthen the walls of someone else’s village’. She might even become an

‘opponent’, as the author of Ruhut put it, because she would make demands on the wealth of her father and brothers after marriage. The birth of a girl was particularly dreaded if she was the next in a long sequence of daughters.⁴² Only if many sons had been born first, would the parents be overjoyed when the mother finally delivered a girl child.

Once a healthy child was born, the parents were not spared anxiety. ‘When a child falls ill, even if not very serious, the parents immediately become utterly alarmed and out of self-effacing affection do everything in their power that may help the little Lazarus to get back on its feet’ (Bruch 1912:19). It was believed that every desire of the child had to be fulfilled to lure his soul (tondi) to return to its body. When death was imminent, the parents would become desperate. The depth of despair comes across in the following lamentation of a widow who felt the end of her only son was near:

Ah, my little sprout Don’t you even dare

to leave me behind, an empty rice husk In your place I want to be put in the grave

My father [meaning my son] must live on Live in the midst of this world

When you have to die

Oh, then I will be like a chicken, one has let go to fly away Like a horse one has let run off

[…]

I have to drown myself, when you die

In the river Situmallam, I have to drown myself When you hurl yourself in the depth

In the deep abyss

40 Meerwaldt (1901b:12-8) tells the story of a man called Ompu Ginjang, who threw out his wife and three daughters after she had given birth to the last child, and took another wife. After he converted to Christianity, he took her and the children back on the advice of missionary Nommensen.

41 VEM, F/b 2,1 Ref. Brakensiek 1911:3. Vergouwen ([1933] 1964:221) wrote in a similar vein: ‘From then on [after the birth of a son] he will look upon his wife with respect and she is assured of his faithfulness and affection’.

42 Bruch 1912:16; Meerwaldt 1901b: 17-8; Ruhut (1898 [tr. Meerwaldt 1904:118-9]). During my stay in North Tapanuli, a female teacher told me she felt rejected by her parents, because she was their seventh daughter and they had no son.

Which no one can climb out of I take the step to make a twisted rope The way to death

(Warneck 1909:69)⁴³

For this widow, life was about to lose its meaning. The often-used metaphor of the empty rice husk for an infertile woman, or a woman without a son and beyond childbearing, is also telling:

like an empty rice husk, she was considered useless and felt herself to be so.⁴⁴ The metaphors mentioning the chicken and the horse equate the mother who lost her son with a domesticated animal who would not survive in the wild.

When a child had died, the parents would become beside themselves with grief. With empathy, Bruch wrote: ‘[W]hen a son dies, perhaps the only one, the sorrow of the parents is incredible: for weeks their eyes are red from crying and for months the heartbroken mother expresses her unspeakable sadness in long lamentations. Prostrated on the grave of her darling she announces in a loud, wailing voice to the peaceful and quiet world around her how her poor mother’s heart suffers’ (Bruch 1912:19). Warneck reported similar reactions to the death of a child by fathers: ‘those left behind stare brooding in front of them for months, do not work, do not go to the market, lament incessantly out of desperate grief’ (Warneck 1909:68). A missionary nurse wrote about a mother who had just lost her sixth child, a boy, while of her previous five children only one daughter had remained alive: ‘The sorrow of the woman was indescribable, and also the husband was very embittered. […] How crushing it is for a Batak woman can be understood only by those who know the Batak’.⁴⁵ The sorrow of women was intensified by the thought that they were responsible for the death of a child, particularly if the child was still a baby or a toddler. They blamed their own soul: ‘Oh, my dog tondi, you detest having a child!’⁴⁶ It is not surprising that the sources often mention the most extreme expressions of grief as that of middle-aged mothers and older widows, who had little or no hope of conceiving again.⁴⁷ This had to do with the vulnerable position of widows without a son, a subject discussed in the next chapter. Men, too, could become desperate, and might become suicidal: Warneck (1909:68) mentioned men who had hanged themselves because they had lost a son. In one sad case, a very poor and old man without a son stabbed his wife and seven-year-old daughter to death before he tried to commit suicide. It turned out he had wanted to save them from destitution after his death. ⁴⁸

How a husband and children reacted to the death of a wife and mother who had died in childbirth is not recorded in the sources. Perhaps they mourned in private? If her begu demanded

43 Van Asselt (1906:205) recalled the conversation between a dying young Christian man and his mother, who said she wanted to die if he did (her son told her she talked like the heathens and urged her to surrender herself to the Lord Jesus).

44 The same metaphor is found in Simon 1982:191. This also contains lamentations for other relatives during a mangongkal holiholi ceremony in 1981.

45 Letter by Magda Albrecht, Der Meisters Ruf 1930:131-2.

46 Warneck 1909:54. Van Asselt (1906:204) also mentioned the responsibility of the mother for the well-being and illness/

death of her children.

47 An indication that mourning the dead was mainly a women’s affair is that all five lamentations quoted by Braasem (1951:87-91) were voiced by women.

48 ‘Lantaran azab sengsara jang ta’ terderita’, Pandoe 1936: 60-61. The article made no mention of the absence of a son being the reason for Japeth’s desperate act. Probably the author thought that the readers would draw this conclusion for themselves.

an offering, one would give it cooked rice made yellow with curcuma root, placed on a leaf, and then put it on the principal cross beam supporting the house, ritually considered the lowliest place of a dwelling, and one should do this sideways.⁴⁹ No matter how wealthy her descendants, a ceremony for her was out of the question (Warneck 1909:77).