2i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The foregoing are the general types of the forms of survival 

 in which the party of the bride is represented. We have traced 

 the various stages of disintegration from actual resistance offered 

 by both the men and women of the bride's party, to the offering 

 of such resistance terminated by a surrender of the bride, and 

 then to resistance being offered by the women only. Thence, 

 from feigned resistance evinced by a sham fight, it passed to the 

 mere closing of the house, and finally to the form in which no 

 resistance is simulated. The semblance of hostility to the party 

 of the bride gradually dwindles away till it is reduced to merely 

 tapping the father and mother of the bride on the shoulder with 

 a small stick, as is done by the Samoyeds, or to the pretense of 

 tearing the bride from the arms of her mother, as is the custom 

 in Sardinia. To come down to ourselves, it is very probable that 

 the practice of throwing an old shoe after the departing bride 

 and bridegroom is a last surviving relic of the form of a struggle 

 between opposing parties. 



It is difficult to say to what class such ceremonies as that ob- 

 served by the Mundaris of Bengal, where an arrow is fired through 

 the loophole formed by the arm of the bride as she holds a pitcher 

 of water on her head, and by the Romans, where the bride's hair 

 was parted with a spear, belong ; but the use of weapons seems 

 to justify us in regarding them as very disintegrated survivals 

 of our subhead (a). Perhaps the custom observed in Anglo- 

 Saxon marriages, where the father delivered the bride's shoe to 

 the bridegroom, and the latter tapped her on the head with it, is 

 also one. 



We come now to our subhead (6). The forms of capture of 

 this class seem to be symbolic of a capture of a woman by sur- 

 prise or stratagem. In these, though the bride is carried off with 

 real or pretended violence, her friends offer no opposition and 

 feign no grief. It is no longer a struggle between clans, and there 

 is no longer a party supporting the bride. 



First of this class is that form in which the girl is carried off 

 nolens volens. The consent of the parents to the marriage has 

 been obtained, and all the preliminaries settled, but in most cases 

 the girl has received no warning of what is about to take place. 

 Sometimes, of course, she may have received a hint, but in this 

 form she is not necessarily a consenting party, and her resistance 

 is violent. Among some peoples it is usual for the bridegroom 

 to be assisted by one or two friends; among others he carries 

 out the abduction alone. The first represents capture by a war 

 party, the second by an individual, but the latter form is com- 

 paratively rare. 



Of cases in which the bridegroom is assisted by his companions 

 we find examples 1. Among the Mandingo tribes settled along 



