Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/362

 340 Ceremonial Customs of the Bj'itish Gipsies.

closely endogamous, the variety and instability of their marriage rites, the comparatively large number of those that symbolize union, and the scarcity of those that mark transition, would be natural.

Gipsy marriages are as a rule permanent. True, Mirny only wanted to marry Bulwer Lytton for five years,"^ and in a paragraph on German Gipsies in an undated Libaiische Zeitung"^^ it is stated that marriages are in the first place for five years only, after which they become final if the wife has borne children and not betrayed her husband. This statement is, however, quite unconfirmed.

Unfaithfulness, like unchastity before marriage, is ex- tremely rare. In Britain the men have never, as far as is known, been punished for it, but in Germany and Hungary they are maimed by being shot, either in the leg or in the arm." The treatment of erring sisters has naturally been more severe. Possibly they were once buried alive, and certainly they used to be expelled from the family for ever, a punishment comparable with that meted out in the Balkans, where they suffer temporary or permanent banish- ment, neither they nor their husbands being allowed to remarry as long as their partners survive.'^^ From Ade- laide Garratt {fiee Lee) and Eros and Saiki Heme I recently heard of survivals of two other forms of punish- ment. Dick Heme, they said, cut off the ears of one of his two wives (and incidentally gave them to the donkey to eat), because of her infidelity, whilst, for the same reason, another Heme caused his wife to run naked around a large field. '^ In Hungary an unfaithful Gipsy wife suffers

'* See note 68.

''^ Journal pf t/ie Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol., v., pp. 312-3.

 Ibid., vol. ii., p. 355.

'* Wlislocki, " Vehmgeiichte bei den bosnischen und bulgarischen wander- zigeuner" in Ethnologische Mittheilnngeii atts Ungam (Budapest, 1893), vol. in., p. 173.

"'^Journal of Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. iii., pp. 170- 1.