Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/496

490 trunks, from which she takes two pairs of shoes and stockings, and, placing them on a copper tray, presents them to her mother and father-in-law. She also makes presents to all the members of the family. A lucky day is chosen for the ceremony, entitled “upsetting the precious vase”, referred to above. Its contents are upset on the bed, and the bride and bridegroom struggle to see who will pick up most of them. The person who is most successful is considered lucky.

On the fourth day after the marriage, emissaries are sent from the bride’s family to convey the daughter home, where she and the bridegroom are feasted. After the pair have been married a month, the bride returns to her father’s family, staying there for a few days. She is not generally accompanied by the bridegroom, though, in some instances, he goes with her.

Stray Notes. —It is strange that the Chinese should so firmly stick to the custom of go-betweens, as these latter individuals are counted amongst disreputable persons. So, amongst others, Chuhi tells us, in his Instruction for the Young (Hsiao Hsüch), and in a Pekin popular proverb the go-betweens are numbered amongst those categories of people whom “it is right to put to death without their having committed any special crime”—wu²-tsui³, chiu⁴ k’o³ sha¹. The Chinese believe that marriages are made in heaven. One of their demi-gods is the Yüch-hsia-lào’rh³ (“Old Man under the Moon”) who ties together, with an invisible red string, the feet of those who are destined by fate to become man and wife. A goddess of love will also be met with in the Hung-lou-mêng (“Dream of the Red Chamber”), The finding of a suitable bride is further expressed by the wortds, “san-shêng-yüan” (Hung-lou-mêng, chap. i), “the desire of the three lives”, man and wife being destined for each other befre they have come down to this lower world, becoming man and wife below here, and