Pagoda feasts offer exceptional opportunities for lovelorn swains, and many young couples have found their future happiness when gazing into Buddha’s eyes. Evening-time is courting-time in all the world, especially in this country, which is too hot during the day to permit of any useless expenditure of energy, even by an ardent lover. They also say that the men of Burmah are influenced by the proverb that says: “In the morning women are cross and peevish, in the middle of the day they are testy and quarrelsome, but at night they are sweet and amiable.”
If the lover does not expect to meet his sweetheart at a festival or a theatrical entertainment, he waits around until he thinks the old people have retired for the night, and then with a friend or two as chaperons he calls upon his adored one, and finds her with powdered face and pretty dress awaiting him in the moonlit veranda. There is little privacy in this courtship, because divisions between the rooms are often only made of matting, and mothers in Burmah are proverbial for the quickness of hearing when it concerns the courtship of their daughters. There is no lovemaking as we know it—kissing, and holding of hands, and embracing—which would be most shocking to the modest instincts of the Burmese maiden. Yet love has signs, and finally father’s and mother’s consent is asked, the dowry fixed, and the astrologer consulted, who will tell them if a boy born on Monday and a girl on Wednesday may wed. No matter how ardently the match is desired by the interested parties, some unions, judged according to their birthdays, would be most unlucky. For example:—
Friday’s daughter Didn’t oughter Marry with a Monday’s son; Should she do it Both will rue it, Life’s last lap will soon be run.
Each day of the week is guarded by an animal, and it naturally follows that if a man was born on a day that was ruled by a serpent and a woman on a day ruled by a mongoose, the serpent’s deadly enemy, they would surely not live happily together. But if the parent’s consent is given, the combination of birthdays are lucky, the dowry is satisfactory to all concerned, then the propitious day must be found from the horoscope for the actual wedding to take place. During June, July, August, and September, the Buddhist Lent, all marriages are barred to the strict followers of Buddha, and it would be a very unregenerate son or daughter who would shock his old father and mother by daring to ask to marry during this time. Marriage is a very precarious proceeding, because if it takes place in certain months the couple will be rich, in other months they will always love each other, while there are unfortunate months that bring sickness and death to those tempting Hymen at this time. Nevertheless, notwithstanding all the obstacles that seem to be placed in the way of marriage, there are few spinsters in Burmah, and virtually every man over twenty years of age has a wife.