and to the attempts often made to bring back to the husband a wife who had been put away. This facility of divorce and the general looseness of the marriage relation is one of the least pleasing features of Malagasy society; the power of divorce being usually in the husband’s hands, and being often exercised for the most trivial reasons, and effected in an absurdly easy fashion. It will be seen, however, in the following piece, that the woman was often quite equal to her husband in power of repartee, and could speak with stinging sarcasm of his fickle conduct and heartlessness.
Sending home a divorced Wife.
Whereaway, O pair of bluebirds? are you going east or going west? If to the west, I will bind you hand and foot to tell to Rabàrimàso that for a whole year and throughout seven months thy friend has not bathed in warm water, but tears longing for thee have been his bath. Therefore say: May you live, says Ratsàrahòbitsìmbahofàty[1] [that is, the husband], for thou art not forgotten by him, though the distance be great and though the streams be in flood. And when Rafàraélanàndejérana [Mrs. Long-enduring], heard that, she said: “Upon my word, I am astonished at thee, Andriamatòa [a term of respect to an elderly man or eldest son]: when you married me, you thought the road was not big enough for me, but when you divorced me you considered me a mere nothing; when you asked for me, you spread out like the broad roof of the house, but when you put me away you folded up like its gable. So enough of that, Andriamatòa,” &c.
And so she proceeds to pile up figure upon figure to illustrate his illtreatment of her; telling him, “Perhaps you think me a poor little locust left by its companions, which can be caught by anyone having a hand.” “A protection,” she tells him, “can be found from the rain by sewing together the mat umbrellas, but it is love that is spent, and love that is scattered, and love that has removed, and the cut ends of the threads are not to be joined together.”[2] To all this the husband rejoins: “Unfortunate that I am, Rafàra, wife beloved, I sent unfit persons; to get you home were they sent, nevertheless to keep us separate is what they have accomplished; so come home then, Rafàra, for our children are sad, the house is desolate, the rice fields are turned into
