Marriage customs (as recorded in 1923)

Driberg described the Lango marriage of a century ago. Many of its rules are still known today.

• Consent. A girl could not be forced into a marriage she did not want. A man usually got to know a girl he liked first; if the feeling was shared they told their parents, and the dowry was then agreed with the girl’s guardian: her father, brother or uncle.
• The dowry was paid in cattle, goats, and in some cases hoes and spears. How much depended on the families and the times: it was very high before the great cattle plague of 1890, fell almost to nothing afterwards, and rose again. Elders of the man’s family took the first cattle to the courtyard of the girl’s mother, and a bull was killed for the marriage feast.
• Whom one may marry. Marriage was strictly forbidden within the father’s clan and the mother’s clan, however distant the relationship. This rule is still at the centre of Lango life.
• A mother’s eye. A young man’s mother took keen interest in his intended wife and tried to find out whether she would be a good housewife, sometimes by setting small tests.
• Households. Marriage then was polygynous: each wife had her own house and courtyard, and her own crops and granary.

Source: J. H. Driberg, The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda (London, 1923), pp. 154–157; public domain. It describes life about a hundred years ago as a colonial administrator saw it, so customs have changed and some may be told differently today. Elders and families are invited to correct it and add what they know.