Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/360

 338 Ccrononial Customs of the British Gipsies.

of jumping over the branch of a sacred tree, and as such interprets it as a fertility charm.^^ It is important to note that no similar rite has been recorded for Gipsies anywhere outside Ikitain, and perhaps significant that the perform- ance of it was in no way secret, friendly gdjos being allowed to witness it. But at present I shall hazard no answer to the questions raised.

Jumping over tongs has been ascribed both to the English Gipsies and to the tinklers,^'^ but the evidence for the exist- ence of this as a marriage rite is entirely unsatisfactory.

It is also very doubtful whether any credence can be given to Bulwer Lytton's statement that, when his gipsy friend, ?vlimy, proposed to marry him, she said : "You will break a piece of burned earth with me, — a tile for instance."^^ The breaking of an earthen vessel is, how- ever, a continental Gipsy marriage ceremony, practised in Germany, Spain, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Turkey.^^

Another English Gipsy custom, according to a writer in Notes and Queries,''^ was the compelling of the bride to bring a pail of water to her husband's tent ; it was probably intended to symbolize wifely subjection.

Simson's vague statement that the tinklers at"one time sacrificed a horse at their marriage ceremony cannot be omitted, though the accuracy of it is doubtful.'^ Sacrifice is a marriage rite found amongst Indo-European peoples.

The same writer '^ also asserts that the father of the bridegroom used to spend the three or four nights

^^ Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. iii., p. 178.

^"^ Ibid., O.S., vol. i., p. 179; H. N. Hutchinson, Marriage Citstoiits in many Lands (1897), p. 337.

{1883), vol. i., pp. 315-325-
 * The Life, Letters and Literary Kevtaiiis of Ediuard Bulwer, Lord Lytton

225-6, quotes Borrow and Kogalnitchan for this practice in Spain and Moldavia. Transylvania: Hutchinson, op. cit., p. 242. Turkey: L. M. J. Garnett, Women of Turkey (1891), vol. ii., p. 360.
 * Germany: see note 54; A. Colocci, Gli Ziiiiiari (Torino, 1889), pp.

"'4th S., vol. iii. (1869), pp. 461-2. " Op. cit., p. 269. " Op. cit., p. 264.