zi6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



have a curious custom of stealing their neighbors' wives, of 

 course not without their secret assent. In such cases the stolen 

 wife belongs to her ravisher, who pays the husband a good sum 

 as compensation." * 



The next disintegration is, perhaps, to be found in those cases 

 in which the women seize the bride and drag her to her suitor's 

 house. This form occurs among the Greenlanders. 



The next is where the violence, or feigned violence, takes the 

 form of tearing the bride's clothes. This form is found among 

 the Tunguses and Kamchadales, of whom Ernan says a matrimo- 

 nial engagement is not considered as definitely concluded till the 

 lover has got the better of his bride " and has torn her clothes." f 

 A variety of this form is found in Circassia, where an important 

 part of the marriage ceremony consists in the bridegroom draw- 

 ing his dagger and cutting open the bride's corset. 



The next is where the appearance of violence is still further 

 eliminated, and custom only requires the bridegroom to carry his 

 bride to his house. This form is observed by the Indians of Can- 

 ada, where the bridegroom takes his wife on his back, and, amid 

 the plaudits of the spectators, carries her to his tent.J The West- 

 ern tribes of North America " regard it as an important part of 

 the marriage ceremony that the bride should be carried to her 

 husband's dwelling. In Mexico, also, the husband took the bride 

 on his back and carried her a short distance. Bruce, in Abys- 

 sinia, observed an identical custom."* Speke witnessed a similar 

 ceremony at Karague, East Africa, and this form is also observed 

 by the Susus, "West Africa, with whom, however, the bride is 

 sometimes carried on the back of a woman. 



From carrying the bride on the back, to simply lifting or 

 forcing her over the threshold of the bridegroom's house, the 

 transition is easy. In the patrician marriages of the Romans the 

 bridegroom had to carry the bride over the threshold of the 

 house, and among the Bedouin Arabs it is necessary for the bride- 

 groom to force the bride to enter his tent. A similar custom 

 existed among the French, at least in some provinces, in the sev- 

 enteenth century. At Sparta, after the actual carrying off of 

 the bride had fallen into desuetude, the bridegroom had to take 

 up the bride and carry her from one room to another. In China, 

 before the bridal procession starts, the young sisters and female 

 friends of the bride come and weep with her till it is time to leave 

 the house of her parents; and when the procession reaches the 

 bridegroom's house the bride is carried into the house by a matron, 

 and lifted over a pan of charcoal at the door. A variation of this 



* Mongolia, vol. ii, p. 121. \ Carver's Travels, p. 274. 



f Siberia, vol. ii, p. 442. * Origin of Civilization, p. 88. 



