Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/456

450 pail, and decorates the house with linen cloths and towels. The feasting lasts a week or more, according to the means of the parents. Sometimes a whole month elapses before a village settles down into its normal condition.

A wife during her whole life must never show her bare feet to her father and mother-in-law, and on that account women work in boots, for they fear to insult their ancestors. With the Moksha of Nizhegorod the bride wears nothing on her head for six weeks. She is then invested with one, with a curious ceremony. After a prescribed prayer the mother-in-law or oldest woman of the house mounts upon the roof, opens the smoke-hole, and then gives the young wife a head-dress, with these words: “The old women of thine ancestors wore such an one, and order thee to wear one.”

Among the Moksha of Saratoff, for the first year, the bride is termed Odyrava (young woman), or Vechova (beloved), and she goes about bareheaded. After that period she is invested with a head-dress in the same way as described, and receives the name of Parava (good woman), or Mazava (beautiful woman).

§ 8. Separations and divorces are extremely rare, for the