prolonged silence on the part of the bride is very common in Bulgaria,
though it is beginning to yield to a sense of the ludicrous. {74a} In
Sparta and in Crete, as is well known, the bridegroom was long the victim
of a somewhat similar taboo, and was only permitted to seek the company
of his wife secretly, and in the dark, like the Iroquois described by
Lafitau.

Herodotus tells us (i. 146) that some of the old Ionian colonists
'brought no women with them, but took wives of the women of the Carians,
whose fathers they had slain. Therefore the women made a law for
themselves, and handed it down to their daughters, that they should never
sit at meat with their husbands, and _that none should ever call her
husband by his name_.' In precisely the same way, in Zululand the wife
may not mention her husband's name, just as in the Welsh fairy tale the
husband may not even know the name of his fairy bride, on pain of losing
her for ever. These ideas about names, and freakish ways of avoiding the
use of names, mark the childhood of languages, according to Mr. Max
Muller, {74b} and, therefore, the childhood of Society. The Kaffirs call
this etiquette 'Hlonipa.' It applies to women as well as men. A Kaffir
bride is not called by her own name in her husband's village, but is
spoken of as 'mother of so and so,' even before she has borne a child.
The universal superstition about names is at the bottom of this custom.
The Aleutian Islanders, according to Dall, are quite distressed when
obliged to speak to their wives in the presence of others. The Fijians
did not know where to look when missionaries hinted that a man might live
under the same roof as his wife. {75a} Among the Turkomans, for six
months, a year, or two years, a husband is only allowed to visit his wife
by stealth.

The number of these instances could probably be increased by a little