Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/453

Rh she wishes the bride may awake joy in men, that all around her may laugh, and that the bride herself may laugh and smile all her days. After this performance the old woman retires.

Meanwhile the bride has been dressing, and, when this is completed, she is led into the room, covered with a red silk kerchief, and made to sit between her own and the bridegroom’s bridesmaid. All now rise from their seats, and prayer is made to Vedyn azyr ava to bless the future wife, to mitigate her pains of labour, and to give her abundant offspring. Her father and mother then give her their blessing. During the prayers and blessing a large candle is burning on the threshold, and is not extinguished before the termination of the wedding ceremonies. The bride is then carried on men’s shoulders, seated in the decorated tilt-cart which the bridegroom had had made for her, and afterwards they go for the bridegroom. He is taken to church in a carriage-and-pair, and lies in a recumbent position, covered with a hide. Around this carriage drive the vehicles of his girl relations, who sing songs to belittle the family of the bride. Before the bride’s party, led by the best man, have gone a quarter of a mile, he halts it, and marches round the tilt-cart with his drawn sword to drive away evil spirits, or, after halting the cortège, he scratches a ring round it with a sword. This ceremony is again repeated before reaching the church.

After the solemnization of the marriage by a priest, the party drives straight to the bridegroom’s house. Here it is received at the gates by the oldest man in the house, who cuts a notch with an axe in the door-post to mark the arrival of a new addition to the family. At the threshold of the house the young couple are met by the bridegroom’s