Sunjata

Marriage happens everywhere.  Whatever society you come across there is going to be marriage in some form or another.  By extension, there are weddings everywhere.  And nothing brings out the traditional and ritualistic like a wedding.   It is the joining of two lives together, so the event can be fraught with bad luck, bad omens, and bad manners.  Best to be on the safe side by participating in any and all superstitions that ward off the bad juju. 

In Sunjata, the traditional oral epic of the Mande People, this adherence to the old ways is given an origin.  In a passage describing the meeting of Sunjata’s parents the wedding traditions of the culture are explained and given purpose.  Sogolon Conde, Sunjata’s future mother, has been cursed by her sister.  Her legs are twisted ad her head is bald, but she is still the most powerful sorceress around.  Before Sogolon came the Manden traditions was that a bride would walk into her future husbands hut.  But her twisted feet stirred up too much dust. This made the procession of sister brides behind her complain.  The co wives picked up Sogolon and carried her into the village, singing as they went.  After three trials with the co-wives and three trials with her husband Sogolon concedes that Maghan Konfara is her husband.  She does this through the ritual of the Kola nuts.  “The ten kola nuts that are given to the women,/ It was Sogolon who first put them into water,/ It is the woman who is supposed to put the kola in water,/And then hand it to her husband./ …/She went and knelt in front of Maghan Konfara/ She said  “He is my married Husband” (Norton 1538).  Food is often a part of marriage traditions. 

The small part seen in the marriage ceremony often represents a life of plenty in the future.  In Western culture the most obvious example is the wedding cake.  There are many traditions surrounding the cake, but one that is becoming increasingly rare has to do with unmarried guest taking a piece of the cake home.  It’s said that if a person places a piece of the cake under their pillow, he or she will dream of their future spouse.   Not bad for a confection. 

This is one of the sweeter traditions, and has little to do with some of the more…eccentric customs discovered in my internet search.  In France they make married couples eat out of toilets, in Scotland they cover the bride to be in fish heads and spoiled milk before her bachelorette party, and in Nothern Borneo they don’t allow the married couple to go to the bathroom at all for 72 hours before wedding.  So in comparison, the tradition is more “quaint” than “terrifyingly antiquated and related to the subjugation and loss of status caused by marriage”.  The worst that comes out of this tradition is laundry.  Speaking of, I guess this superstition came about when the traditional wedding cake was fruit cake- which is very dense, and would not have made such a mess.

 There are a lot of traditions surrounding the wedding cake.  The three tiered cake comes from when the bride and groom had to kiss over the cake as it was raised higher and higher.  There is a Southern American tradition of groom’s cake, most often chocolate.  The bride used to do the cake cutting alone, as a sign of her first act as hostess.  Most of these traditions are still with us, in one form or another.  The cake under the pillow has fallen into disfavor, becoming an old wives tale and a children’s game.  Much like peeling an apple into one long strip and throwing it over your shoulder to find the first letter of your intended’s name, no one really thinks it will work.  I had heard of this tradition before, but mostly in romance novels and fairy tales.  There is a common variation of having to pass the cake through a ruby ring before it can work, but this could be the exaggeration of an author.  But the tradition still holds true to the idea that food is important in a wedding.  In every culture, from the Mande to the English, food at a wedding represents plenty for the future.  And everyone looks to the future at a wedding. 

Works Cited

               Conrad, David C., Djobba Kamara and Lansana Magassouba. Sunjata: A West African Epic.  The Norton Anthology of World Literature: New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013.  1517-1576. Print.