Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/234

222 between men and their mothers-in-law of which modern humorists make so much.

That a similar series of prohibitions should exist, limiting the social relations of the wife with the family of her husband, is what we might expect to find; the husband's relatives being of the party of the feigned abductor, and so enemies. Among the Calmucks the daughter-in-law must not speak to her father-in-law, nor sit in his presence. In China, the father-in-law, after the wedding-day, never sees the face of his daughter-in-law again; he never visits her, and, if they chance to meet, he hides himself. With the Ostiaks of Siberia and the Basutos of South Africa the young wife must not look in the face of her father-in-law, and must avoid him as much as possible, till she has borne a child. The Armenian wife must conceal her face from her husband's father and mother. A more archaic form of these varieties is found among the Kaffirs of South Africa, with whom a married woman is cut off from all intercourse, not only with her father-in-law, but with all her husband's male relations in the ascending line. "She is not allowed to pronounce their names, even mentally; and whenever the emphatic syllable of either of their names occurs in any other word, she must avoid it, by either substituting an entirely new word, or at least another syllable in its place."

This terminates our collection of examples, though we might probably add to those which follow the consummation of the marriage the widely distributed custom which forbids husband and wife to eat together. The numerous cases we have given show how very universal marriage by capture de facto must have been, and also, since it has left such enduring traces, for what a long period of time it must have been practiced. Among ourselves it influenced public opinion until comparatively recent times, for it was not until the reign of Henry VII that the violent seizure of a woman was made a criminal offense, and even then the operation of the statute was limited to the abduction of women possessed of lands and goods. A man might still carry off a girl, provided she was not an heiress; but in spite of the law and its severe penalties, the abduction of heiresses continued to be a common occurrence, especially in Ireland, down to the close of the last century, and to be regarded by the general public as but a venial offense at most.