Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/358

 336 Ceremonial Custo^ns of the British Gipsies.

European marriage form which is known in the North of England and Scotland, where, by the way, cheese is frequently used in other rites. In passing, it may be noticed that the Gipsies, in England at any rate, think that scattering bread on a person, or his carrying a grain of wheat, protects him against dangers, both natural and supernatural.^^

To the same Gipsies the practice of jumping over a broomstick as a form of marriage has been ascribed, ^^ a rite also mentioned by Mrs. Miln*'! and Morwood.®^ The latter relates how he surprised a company of Gipsies in Yorkshire, drawn up in two parallel rows, between which the bride and bridegroom passed, jumping over a broomstick that was held across their path about eighteen inches from the ground. According to Angelina Gray {nee Smith), her grandfather, Wisdom Smith, was married over a broom- stick ; an old gipsy woman near Grantham (? Mary Smith) affirmed that all her people were so married ; and an Oxfordshire Smith once stated that some few of the Gipsies jumped over the broomstick at marriage. A bough of a tree was used in its place by the Shaws, Grays, and Dymocks, if one can rely on a shepherd of Stanstead Abbots who knew them well.^^ In Wales marriage over the suvel or broom is still perfectly remembered by the Wood family. Matthew Wood's father and mother were made man and wife in this way, and so were Ben and Caroline Wood. Dr. Sampson has been kind enough to supply me with some very interesting details of the ceremony.^* The shuvel might be a branch or bough of the flowering broom {cytisus scoparins), in flower if season

^^ Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. iv., pp. 265-6. «»See note 58. «i Op, cit., p. 381.

^^ Our Gipsies in City, Tent and Van (1S85), p. 141. «» jV. dr' Q., 4th S., vol, iii. (1869), pp. 461-2.

^* These and others have since been published in Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. v., pp. 198-201.