Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/261

 The Lifting of the Bride. 24.5

stands in a basket when the bridegroom comes to claim her daughter.^

We have possibly a hint of the same idea of vicarious influence in the cases noted above where members of the wedding party, and even the vicar himself, join in the jump over the Petting Stone. We have another similar case among the Greeks of Turkey, where the Kumbaros and Kumbara, the persons who stand behind the bridegroom and bride during the ceremony, are lifted into the air when the marriage rite is concluded. ^

In India, again, the pestle used in pounding grain, for reasons which are sufficiently obvious, is often selected for the bride to tread on, or she is seated on a blanket, thus associating her with the fertility of the flocks, while among the Namburis of Malabar, as the pair are escorted into the nuptial chamber, a blanket is spread on the ground with a white cloth over it, and hemmed in with edges of rice, on which the pair are seated by the officiating priest. ^

While all or most of these are probably fertility charms, the English cases are less easily explained. I have no evidence to show what the history of these practices may be. But if they do not prove to be comparatively modern inventions, part of the ordinary amusements or buffoonery accompanying a village marriage, they are possibly worn- down survivals of some primitive usages. Thus, at Knuts- ford, in Cheshire, silver sand, locally called " great," " greet," or " grit," is spread before the bride's house in the form of wreaths of flowers, on which she is expected to tread. '^ In Sunderland this is now replaced by sawdust, or even by a strip of carpet. ^ At Cranbrook, in Kent,

' Crooke, op. cit, ii., 91.

- Lobel, op. cit., 143

' Bombay Gazetteer, xvii., 105; xxiii., 168; xxi., 195 ; Logan, Majiual of Malabar, i., 151, 128.

^ Fifth Series Notes and Queries, v., 186.

'" Ibid., First Series, viii., 617 ; Second Series, x., 246. Cf. also Newcastle- on-Tyne, in Henderson, p. 40.