Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/107

Rh custom was lost. To such belongs the following custom, given by the Sheh-Zade in the Story of The Forty Viziers, p. 16 (Constantinople edition, 1303 ): "If you are a stranger, go and sit down at the door of the bath-house and ask every woman who comes out of the bath-house, 'Have you a husband?' And whatsoever woman says, 'I have no husband,' must, according to the custom of this city, become your wife." It may be noticed, however, that this passage can be brought to bear upon the famous passage in Herodotus, speaking of the immorality of Babylonian women, and, perhaps, upon Quintus Curtius, v., 1; but the fact that this custom was connected with the bath-house still remains.

To the same category of rudimentary customs belongs probably the divination by the bridge. Not having here the book where it is described, I can give no reference to it, and therefore I am obliged to describe it fully, according to what I have read and seen. Christmas night is thought in Russia to be one of the best times for divination. Among many forms of it, divination by the bridge is largely used. Small bits of wood are bound so as to form a rough imitation of a bridge, and put under the pillow. Before going to bed the girl (this divination is never used by men) says: "Soosheny-ryasheny, pridi ko mnye, proviedyi myenya," i.e., My betrothed, appointed for me, come to me, and lead me over the bridge. In the divination by the mirror, two mirrors are placed one against the other, with two candles and two glasses of water between. The teo glasses of water, however, hardly belong to the same class of facts; for divination by the mirror cannot be very old, and the glasses may form a part, or appear instead, of a complete dinner, which is sometimes served for the girl and her mysterious visitor. Divination by harkening at the windows of an old, for the most part dilapidated, bath-house, comes nearer to the point, and is, perhaps, connected with the above-quoted Turkish story. I could not find this case of divination amongst the Tartars in the South of Russia; but I was told in Asia Minor that this custom exists there as well, although the Mohammedan aversion to all superstitious customs did not allow me and my interlocutors to enter into any details as to the time and mode of this divination.

I cannot as yet venture to give any explanation of the above-mentioned customs, for the materials are hardly large enough. I may, however, point to the Swan-maiden type of folktales, and