A Drummer's Testament

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Chapter III-25:  Widows

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Customs regarding the remarriage of widows; chiefs' widows: public bathing and beating; passing through the broken wall



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Contents outline and links by paragraph

Widows are different from other unmarried women

How widows marry again

Chiefs' widows are beaten

Bathing the widows and how they pass through the broken wall

Conclusion



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Proverbs and Sayings

Somebody's good luck is somebody's bad luck, and somebody's bad luck is somebody's good luck.

Somebody can refuse something, and somebody will want it.

Somebody will see something and refuse it, and you will even give it to him free and he will not want it, but somebody will count money and go and buy that thing.

“Has he got a soothsaying stone?”

No one would chase a widow unless he himself was well-boiled.

If you are not well-boiled and you take a widow, the day you sleep with her, that is the day you will know if you are somebody who will die.

“All your talks have finished today.  Your chieftaincy is finished.  All your bluffing, and how you were showing yourself, and how you have been talking and doing bad to all the people in this house, it is finished today.”

They heard the mouth of their father.

Gambeyirsi bihi”:  they are children whose mother passed through the broken part of the wall.

“You are the son of a passer through the gambee.”

A widow's talk is different, because she has become a fearful thing.


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