Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/424

418 Their father took the brother to a certain town, where they lived for ten years. The sister came to the town and worked in the same house as the brother. They fell in love, slept together at night, and the sister gave birth to a dog. They had slept together like dogs, and therefore a dog was born.”

With this may be compared the Kalmuk proverb quoted by McLennan, “The great folk and dogs know no relationship.” The fact of being a fellow-villager, or bearing the same family name, is no impediment to marriage, as there is no necessary relationship. Names, in fact, are generally the result of accident, for immediately after birth the child is taken out of doors by the midwife, who looks round, and gives it the name of the first object that catches her eye. Hence such names as Potkaü (Horseshoe), Pinai (Dog), Shi (Sun), Vatse (Excrement). An adopted child can also marry a member of the family of its adoption, as there is no necessary kinship.

There is no fixed age for entering the married state. Among the Erza it is sufficient if the bridegroom be nineteen years of age, but the bride must not be under seventeen. Among the Moksha, on the contrary, the bride must be older than the bridegroom. A lad may marry at the age of eighteen or nineteen, but his wife must be twenty or twenty-one. The betrothal of children under age is scarcely known, though Pallas (Voyages en Russie, i, p. 107), in the year 1768, mentions that they were betrothed at a very tender age, as if it were then usual. The Moksha under no circumstances will allow a younger sister to be married before an elder one; but parents do not object to a younger daughter falling in love with a lad and getting children before they can marry in consequence of this social rule.