Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/363

 Ceremonial Customs of the British Gipsies. 341

expulsion from the band, accompanied by flogging, four gashes to brand her, and a night spent tied naked to a tree.®" In Germany the punishment takes the form of cutting ofif, or at least gashing, the nose.®^ The custom of punishing an unfaithful wife by mutilating the nose or other member of the body is common enough in India,®- but the Gipsies might have acquired it in the Near East, for there is an old Serb enactment of the year 1349, which states that " A noble outraging a married woman shall have his hands and nose cut off," and that " A married woman guilty of libertinage, shall have her nose and ears cut off." ^ Unless these be regarded as such, no traces of divorce rites have been discovered amongst the English and Welsh Gipsies, but the tinkters, according to a somewhat unreliable authority,^ used to employ the broomstick or tongs at their separations, the parties standing on either side and jumping away. But the real //«y{'/t'r divorce ceremony, if Simson®^ can be believed, is one of much greater interest. A horse without blemish was chosen, round which the officiant walked several times at noon, extolling its virtues. It was then set free, and by its tameness or wildness when recap- ture was attempted the guilt of the woman was estimated. If it was lively and mettlesome, then she ran some risk of being slain for her misdeeds. Generally, however, the horse when caught was charged with its own and the woman's sins, upbraided for them, and stabbed. The

^^ Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 1 90- 1 ; quotation from The Martyrdom 0/ an Empress (1904), pp. 141-2.

Monatsschri/t, Feb. 1793, P- "8.
 * Liebich, op. iit., p. 50 ; A. Colocci, op. ciL, p. 228 ; Biester in Berlinische


 * ^ N. Chevers, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudeme Jor India, pp. 487 et seq.

^ Jottrnal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. iv., p. 68; quotation from La Turqtiie d" Europe {I'asis, 1840) by Ami Boue, tome 4, p. 430; Liebich, op. cit., p. 50, mentions a church assembly at Neapolis in Palestine in 1120 which decreed that male Etubrechers should be castrated, and females have their noses cut off.

«* Ibid., O.S., vol. i., p. 179. " Op. cit., pp. 267 et seq.