Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/357

 Ceremonial Customs of the British Gipsies. 335

together, of which the Roman confarrcatio is a much- quoted example, and the English wedding cake a survival is another common Indo-European marriage rite ; and, like " handfasting," it seems to symbolize union. The English Gipsy form of it is distinctly "savage."

The marriage ceremony of the Scottish Gipsies, as described by Simson,^*" was also intended to symbolize union, and the indissolubility thereof. The officiant, who carried a long staff, and wore a ram's horn around his neck, mixed the urine of both parties with earth, and sometimes brandy, and stirred the whole into an indis- soluble mixture. This was then handed to the bride and bridegroom for them to test its indissolubility, after which they joined hands over it and were thus made man and wife. The mixture was bottled up, sealed with a mark like a capital M., and either buried or carefully preserved. (Small quantities of it were occasionally given to various members of the tribe.) Following this the more immediate relations of the contracting parties assured themselves of the virginity of the bride. Unfortunately there is no corroborative evidence for the existence of the earlier part of this ceremon)', nor does any exact parallel seem to be forthcoming either from Gipsies in other countries, or from non-Gipsy peoples anywhere. An analogy to it may be traced in the Hottentot custom, in which the officiant discharges his secretion first over the bridegroom and then over the bride, thus uniting them to the tribe and to one another.^'

At the weddings of the Northumbrian Gipsies, — a class resembling the titiklers, — a cheese or plate was, according to Barker,^^ broken over the head of the happy couple. The breaking of these, possibly to ensure fertility, is probably analogous to the scattering of cereals, an Indo-


 * op. cit., pp. 259 et seq. " Crawley, op. cil.

\V. Andrews (1899), pp. 222-40.
 * "The Gipsy Life of Northumberland," in Bygone Northumberland, by