Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/261

258 comparable to it in wildness and obstreperous mirth. The bride and bridegroom may possibly be a little subdued, but their friends are like men bereft of reason. They career round the bridal party like Arabs of the desert, galloping over ground on which, in cooler moments, they would hesitate even to walk a horse—shouting all the time, and firing volleys from the guns they carry with them…. In the higher parts of Northumberland, as well as on the other side of the Border, the scene is, if possible, still more wild.’

The custom of firing guns when accompanying the bride is very widely distributed, and I have seen the same in the Pyrenees and in Bavaria.

This is a relic of a very early usage, when the bride was carried away by a lover; and very often among savage tribes the attempt at bride-capture was made when she was being about to be given away to one of her own stock.