Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/229

Rh form is found in North Friesland, where a young man, called the bride-lifter, lifts the bride upon the wagon in which the married couple are to travel to their house. The last stage is reached in the form seen by Denham at Sockna, North Africa. The bride is taken on a camel to the bridegroom's house, and, upon arriving there, "it is necessary for her to appear greatly surprised, and refuse to dismount; the women scream, the men shout, and she is at length persuaded to enter."

Finally, an affectation of grief on the part of the bride is the sole demonstration of a feigned compulsion. Such a case was witnessed by Mrs. Atkinson, in Siberia, It is there the custom for the bride to be taken to the bath on the eve of her wedding-day by her young companions, and in this case the road to the bath led past the house where Mrs. Atkinson was stopping. Startled by most heart-rending sobs, that lady hastened to the gate and found a bride being supported by her young friends to the bath. She thought it was a case in which a girl had been forced to accept an unwelcome suitor, and was filled with compassion. When the girl returned from the bath she was still sobbing and quite bowed down with grief. An hour or two later, Mrs. Atkinson went to the bride's cottage and found the damsel eating supper, her face radiant with joy. She asked if she had done it well, and Mrs. Atkinson then learned, to her great surprise, that the weeping was part of the ceremony.

We now come to that form of survival which has been termed "bride-racing," and which we have placed under subhead (c). The least disintegrated variety of this form of capture is that in which there is a bona fide chase, out of doors, and which does not always end in favor of the lover.

We find this form among the Calmucks, with whom, says Dr. Clarke, the ceremony of marriage is performed on horseback. "A girl is first mounted, who rides off in full speed. Her lover pursues; if he overtakes her she becomes his wife, and the marriage is consummated on the spot; after this she returns with him to his tent. But it sometimes happens that the woman does not wish to marry the person by whom she is pursued; in this case she will not suffer him to overtake her. We were assured that no instance occurs of a Calmuck girl being thus caught, unless she have a partiality to the pursuer." This is slightly varied among the Kirghiz, the young woman, who is pursued by all her suitors, being armed with a formidable whip, which she does not hesitate to use if overtaken by a lover who is disagreeable to her. Among the Turkomans the bride carries in her lap the carcass of a sheep or goat, which the pursuer has to snatch from her. The Malays,