Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/154

146 upon, but more evidence is needed to allow the indulgence of theorising; as also the fact that Grozdanka is drawn up (cf. the ανοδος of Greek rites) to her bridegroom. Thus it seems possible that fuller evidence may reveal in the Dædala myth, and in the Grozdanka group of legends, primitive "May Brides", supplanted by the powers of winter, released and wedded in triumph in the spring. If this should prove to be the case, such an instance of primitive ideas and rites centred round the year and its recurring seasons, of their dominance in Greek religion, and their power of survival among the European peasantry, would in itself be of sufficient value.

But the False Bride hints at another significance. It is possible that she may be simply a necessary part of the marriage ceremony of our primitive Aryan ancestors, and that she has thus got into the Greek myth of the Sacred Wedding (ιερος γάμος), and into the many legends which turn on the temporary separation of bride and bridegroom and their final happy reunion.

This, again, it is impossible to discuss till fuller evidence is obtained; and these possibilities and premature theories are only put forward in the hope of thereby eliciting fuller facts from which light may come. Therefore I would emphatically disclaim any attempt at present to demonstrate that in the Daedala festival and myth, and in the many European parallels, traits of a primitive, perhaps Indo-Aryan, marriage ceremony have been preserved, with singular exactness; or further, that in the Dædala festival the marriage of the god was celebrated in this manner. But the following incidental remarks of Dr. Winternitz, Prof Jevons, and Mr. E. S. Hartland, taken together with the declared prevalence of the "False Bride" legends, seem to justify a search into both Aryan and non-Aryan wedding customs.

Dr. Winternitz says: "The custom of substituting an old woman for the bride is certainly one of the most prevalent