As for the father's great pride in his daughter, and his guarding her
like a treasure, that is, by the concurrent testimony of the
authorities, not a token of affection or a regard for virtue, but a
purely commercial matter. Paulitschke himself says (30) that while the
mother is devoted to her child, "the father pays no attention to it."
On the following page he adds:
"The more well-to-do the father is, and the more beautiful
his daughter, the longer he seeks to keep her under the
paternal roof, for the purpose of securing a bigger price
for her through the competition of suitors."
Of the Western Somali tribes at Zayla, Captain J.S. King says[148]
that when a man has fixed his choice on a girl he pays her father $100
to $800. After that
"the proposer is entitled (on payment of $5 each time)
to private interviews with his fiancee to enable him by
a closer inspection to judge better of her personal
charms. But it frequently happens that the young man
squanders all his money on these 'interviews' before
paying the _dafa_ agreed upon. The girl then (at her
parents' instigation) breaks off the match, and her
father, when expostulated with, replies that he will
not force his daughter's inclinations. Hence arise
innumerable breach-of-promise-of-marriage suits, in
which the man is invariably the plaintiff.
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