Note 211.2 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Before passing to another cultural area we may note two other significant customs in Togoland. Weddings there, as elsewhere, are occasions of festivity; and the firing of guns is doubtless an expression of joy and triumph, for the Negro delights in noise. Even when, among the Akposso, in the administrative district of Atakpame, a man succeeds in seducing a married woman away from her husband into his own house, he fires a gun, for he says: “I have now a new wife!” With that the marriage is concluded, and he gives a great feast and defies the former husband, who sometimes attempts to recover her by force. But if the former husband be dead he fires no gun on marrying the widow.211.2 On the other hand, when a man’s wife dies in her house the husband fears to enter it again, and it is usually destroyed. Even where it is not destroyed, it is never again entered by the widower or any of his relations or dependants. Only a stranger not belonging to his family may dare to dwell there. If the widower take a new wife, he builds her a new house.212.1 To build a new house for a new wife is usual; what is important to observe here is that the old house in which the deceased wife dwelt may be safely inhabited by a stranger, and only by a stranger.