Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/262

 246 The Lifting of the Bride.

again, "when a newly married pair leave the church, the path is strewed with emblems of the bridegroom's calling. Thus carpenters walk on shavings, butchers on sheepskins^ shoemakers on leather parings, and blacksmiths on scraps of old iron." ^ On the other hand, chaff or straw seems to have an evil significance when used in this way. It was threatened in the case of Babelchen in Goethe's Faust, and in England such substances are habitually sprinkled before the doors of wife-beaters. ^ The final stage is reached when brides in our time walk on a red carpet or village maids strew flowers in their path. These customs have now become purely decorative or honorific, but, like most popular customs, it is possible from the analogies which have been quoted that their origin and significance may lie much deeper than is commonly supposed.

The same specialisation of custom appears in connection with another group of usages of the same kind — those which regulate the conveyance of the married pair. In India it is regarded as very important that the Jangam bridegroom, who once used to ride on a bullock at his wedding, now follows Brahman custom in using a horse ; that the Charans go on ponies or walk, but may not ride in a cart; that the Mall bride goes in a palanquin, the groom on a pony, or in a sort of sedan-chair; that the Marwari bridegroom is mounted on an ass ; that the Kharwar bride goes in a litter which must be in the form of a boat. ^ All this has, or once had, some significance ; but the explanation, whatever it may have been, is lost, and no one can give abetter explana- tion than : " It is the custom ; if we did otherwise bad luck would surely follow." The Marwari custom of mounting the bridegroom on an ass is said to be connected with the propitiation of Sitala, the smallpox goddess, whose sacred

' Murray, Handbook to Kent, 128.

^ Henderson, Folklore of the Border Counties, 32 ; First Series Notes and Queries, 245, 294 ; Seventh Series, v., 405 ; Eighth Series, iii., 327.

' Bombay Gazetteer, xxii., 112 ; xii., iii. ; Risley, op. cit., ii., 60: Crooke, op. cit., iii., 481, 246.