Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/426

420 otherwise as he would have no home to go to, and bargains with an easy-going priest to marry them. The reckless bridegroom, “who has plunged into the stream without knowing the ford,” in other words, who has brought his bride to church without stipulating beforehand concerning the priest’s fee, has to pay heavily for his want of foresight. The young man has also called upon his male friends to assist him in his enterprise. On a given night, about 11 P.M., some ten or twelve of these, in three or four troikas, assemble in the courtyard of his father’s house, and, on hearing the first cockcrow, they whip the horses and dash off at full speed. On reaching the bride’s village the young man goes alone to fetch his sweetheart, seizes her by the waist, and carries her back to where he had left his friends. She scratches and pinches him the whole time, but the more she resists the better pleased is her abductor. With the help of his friends he throws a cloth over her head, packs her into a carriage, and then they all drive off in hot haste.

Meanwhile the bride’s people have perhaps remarked that something is amiss, and that she has been abducted. The alarm is given, the men of the village are summoned, and a pursuit begins. The pursuers have eventually either to return empty-handed, or they overtake the abductors. In the latter case a tussle ensues, resulting in broken teeth, bruised heads, and sometimes broken legs. If the young man’s party is successful it carries off the girl to church, where the priest performs the marriage ceremony according to the Russian rite.

Marriages of this kind end in a huge carouse given at the house of the bridegroom to the parents and relations of the bride. Her father pretends at first not to wish to enter the gate, makes an uproar, and demands his daughter back; but after a glass or two of spirits he relents, and is led by the arm into the common room. Custom requires that the bride’s mother should resist all efforts to appease her, and she has to be carried in by force. An outraged