Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/119

 the comedy of the carrying off of the bride by the bridegroom with the pretended resistance of the mother and the relations. In the more respectable marriages the ceremonial of capture was simplified, but still very significant. The hair of the bride was separated with the point of a javelin (hasta celibaris), and for this symbolic ceremony a javelin that had pierced the body of a gladiator was preferred. Then the bride, conducted to the house of her husband, was to enter it without touching the threshold; she was lifted over it. It is curious to find this same custom in China now in our own day, and we can hardly help recognising in it the symbolic embodiment of capture.

A similar ceremonial is always practised in Circassia. In the midst of a feast the bridegroom enters, escorted by his friends, and carries off his bride, who henceforth becomes his wife.

Moreover, as at Sparta, the newly-married Circassian must not visit the wife, except in secret, for a whole year—a term evidently fixed, as at Sparta, for the period of probable pregnancy.

It is not very long ago that a ceremonial of the same kind was observed quite near us, in Wales. On the day fixed, the bridegroom and his friends, all on horseback, came to take the bride; but they found themselves in the presence of the friends of the young girl, also on horseback, and a mock fight ensued, during which the future wife fled on the crupper of the horse of her nearest relative. But instantly the squadron of the bridegroom, counting sometimes two or three hundred horse, galloped in pursuit. Finally they rejoined the fugitive, and all was terminated by a feast and common rejoicings.

In Livonia every marriage was also the occasion of a simulated combat of cavalry, as with the Welsh, but it took place before the marriage. In Poland also, and in Lithuania and Russia, the seizure of the girl often preceded marriage.