Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/213

Rh Before dealing with Mélusine's stipulation let us turn to that of the fairy wife of Raymond, lord of Rousset, as narrated by Gervase of Tilbury. She forbade her husband to see her naked. We may compare the Indian tale of Urvasi, the fairy or âpsarâs wedded to Pururavas. Her stipulation was: "Without my desire thou shalt not approach me, and I must not see thee naked, for that is the custom of us women." The futile discussions over this tale by philologists in the third quarter of the last century are an excellent measure of the value of their mythological theories. The late Andrew Lang, with clearer insight, recognized that the gist of the myth was contained not in doubtful explanations of the meaning of the names, but in the custom to which Urvasi thus required her husband to conform. "There must have been," he justly says, "at some time a custom which forbade women to see their husbands without their garments, or the words have no meaning." Accordingly he adduces a number of customs, chiefly relating to the early days of marriage. None of them, it is true, exactly corresponds to that mentioned by Urvasi; but they do show what is now familiar to all anthropologists,—that a number of curious taboos bind brides and bridegrooms in various parts of the world. So far as these taboos are germane to the present enquiry, they exhibit the relations between the young couple as secret, and usually limited to the darkness of night. I have elsewhere studied the subject of visiting husbands. In some countries the husband is never at any time more than a guest who comes by night and goes with daylight; in others visits of this kind are merely a preliminary to a more open and avowed union. It is at least a plausible contention that in the latter cases we have