MARRIAGE CUSTOMS.'

ONE is struck on reading accounts of Eastern weddings by the fact that they are far more elaborate than English customs. In fact, no civilised peoples have a simpler rite than we have ; even the Tuscan peasant, poor and hardworking as he is—and his condition would make the English labourer shudder—can afford a regular jaunt on the brightest day of his life. The races in the South-East of Europe have a cere- monial only less elaborate than that of the Oriental. The remarkable feature of all European marriage customs, and nearly all Asiatic customs too, is that marriages are arranged,

and not the result of natural affection ; so that the Anglo- Saxon race is practically the only one in which a man possesses an unfettered choice and the best possible oppor- tunities of judging the character of his future wife. It is barely possible for the Englishman to realise the fact that there are millions of married couples who have never seen each other's faces till the wedding day. Yet this is the case with half the married people in the world, and half the remainder could count the times they have seen each other before marriage on the fingers of one hand. And, with the exception of France, the greater strangers the bride and bridegroom are to each other, the more elaborate the formali- ties and the more magnificent the wedding ceremonies.

The lot of the Chinese wife is not pleasant to contemplate, and the women are well aware of it, suicide being not unknown among young girls. Every effort, however, is made to give them a happy send-off ; and it would seem that the Chinese leave no stone unturned to impress upon each other the importance and solemnity of the marriage estate. Elaborate preliminaries precede the actual marriage. Presents are exchanged and astrologers consulted, and the respective fathers write letters, politely praising each other's progeny while belittling their own. The girl's father, on being asked for the date of her birth, expresses his gratitude for the honour of the alliance, bewails his daughter's coarseness and stupidity, and regrets his own lack of talent in bringing her up properly. The man's father is not to be outdone, and on the day he forwards the presents writes even more apolo- getically. A letter quoted from Archdeacon Gray is a typical instance. After a fulsome allusion to the bride's beauty, the literary excellence of her father's essays, his distinguished ancestors, and his rank, the writer humbly contrasts his own standing — " I, for my part, have been from boyhood slothful and indigent. I wander through the world as one without any fixed purpose, and the rank which I hold is of a degree more honourable than I deserve. Your daughter is gentle and virtuous, and as for my son, he is so weak in intellect as to be unworthy of

her." The letter concludes that as the match-makers thought more highly of him, the union must take place, and he there- fore sends the customary presents, apologising for their small value and the absence of silks and precious stones, for which, however, he knows he will be excused. The wedding break- fast is held at the bridegroom's house, and the bride is sent for afterwards. The bride's procession then marches to the bridegroom's house, with flags and fans and lights, and such titles as the ancestors of both families have had granted to them displayed in gold lettering on red boards. Even a Mandarin must make way for this procession, or be beaten.

The superiority of the man is not forgotten; the bride grovels before the stool on which he is perched. An im- portant feature of the ceremony is the worship of ancestors, and also that of heaven and earth. The bride, it seems, is carried over the threshold.

The Japanese ceremony is equally elaborate, but more interesting, and the symbolism is decidedly more beautiful, such as when the bride lights her taper at the sacred censer, and the bridegroom lights his from hers, and the two flames are allowed to combine. We wonder Mr. Hutchinson did not quote, for the sake of comparison, from Burns's "Hal- loween ":— " Some kindle eonthie side by side, An' burn thegither trimly."

"In loving bleeze they sweetly join, Till white in ash they're sobbin'."

In the room where the ceremonial sake is drunk, the orna-

• Marriage Customs in Many Lands. By the Rev. H. N. Hutchinson, B.A., PAM. With many Illustrations. London Seeley and Co. [Us.

And again :—

mental table bears, besides the spirit, a fir-tree, a plum-tree in blossom, a crane, and a tortoise. From an artistic point of view, the plum-tree in bloom, as representing woman's beauty, must be allowed to be superior to an orange- tree. No one who knows the age of the great tortoise at the Zoo needs to be told what the imitation tortoise stands for. Miss Bird assures us that no intoxication follows this sake- drinking, but the heads must be strong, the cups small, and the spirit weak, for it is a case of "three times three" alb round. The Persian wedding, and even more the Bedouin wedding, has a peculiar interest for us. The torchlight or lantern procession of the bridegroom to the bride's house, the cries of the women who welcome him, and the beating of drums, and renewed acclamations as the combined procession starts for the bridegroom's house, will remind us of the Parable. The Arab wedding in Southern Palestine lasts, as Samson's did, for seven days, with the peculiar feature of putting and answering riddles. The Bedouin bride-. groom does not see his wife's face till the wedding is over. A cry of delight is raised by the women outside when the bridegroom proclaims his satisfaction. " To the Arabs," says Mr. Hutchinson, " this shout of the triumphant and satisfied bridegroom is one of the most delightful sounds that can be uttered;" and he quotes our Lord's allusion : "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom ; but the friend of the bridegroom, who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice." The Arab wife, however, is not a happy woman, her husband,. in common with all Mahornmedans, scarcely believing that she has a soul. The Mount Sinai Arab bride is not told till all is concluded, and then utters cries of alarm as the notary throws the bridegroom's mantle over her. According to the late Professor Palmer the Emzeineh bride actually did fly to the mountains. Layard tells us of a wedding he saw near Nimroud, that on the third day, when every one was dancing, a party of young men rushed into the crowd, and securing• the wealthiest guests, held them to ransom in a dark room. The money, paid without any ill-feeling, was added to the bride's dowry. This seems to us a good idea. Anything worse than the odious tyranny of the compulsory wedding- present system which we suffer from in England it is hard to conceive.

All these Oriental ceremonies have much in common ; the Chinese customs are not unlike the Turkish, and customs in all Mahommedan countries have naturally much similarity. The match-maker is the most important functionary, and the giving of rich presents by the bridegroom is indispensable: Whether they are given to the father of the bride or to the bride, as in Japan, is only a detail, as the Japanese bride pre- sents them to her parents as a recompense for the trouble they have been at in rearing her. In Turkey the legal formalities assume more prominence. The bridegroom makes a declara- tion of his willingness, signs a contract giving a suitable settlement, and the bride from behind a screen also affirms three times her willingness to marry him. The wedding festivi- ties, with the curious "henna "-staining ceremony, before which the guests with tapers wind in and out of the flower- beds, are proportionately lengthy. A Moorish wedding is also a long and expensive affair, preceded by seven days' feasting, for all of which the bridegroom has to pay hand- somely.

"Marriage by capture" is symbolised more or less in ceremonies all the world over, except in such places where it is still the habit to secure a wife by knocking her down first, as the Australian does with his " waddy " or his " nulls- nulla." The Chinaman, if the parents of his intended are obstinate, carries her off ; the Abyssinian carries his wife round her own house or to his own ; and the Kabyle carries his bride across the threshold, as do also the Chinese, and the Swiss in some parts. The Druses have a regular sham-fight in which the bride's party drive the bridegroom's into his own village ; and in some Arab tribes, the Aenezes, for in- stance, the bride runs from tent to tent before she is caught. Crossing the threshold was and is the most critical period of the wedding-day with all races, not even excepting the Anglo-Saxon. The superstitions fears of the many, always particularly alert on the occasion of a marriage, culminate in this final act of the drama. The lifting of the bride over the threshold or her stepping across it is the signal in Persia, Arabia, and among the Kopts of Egypt for the sacrifice of a goat or a sheep. Among the Aenezes, according to Barck- hardt, the bridegroom simply kills a lamb in front of his father-in-law's tent, and the ceremony, but for the running of the bride from one tent to another, is complete. Perhaps the purest symbolical act is that of the Transylvanian Saxon bridal pair. who step over the threshold with their hands tied together. Some of these Transylvanian customs are remark- able, and must be survivals from a very ancient period. The bridegroom never wears the shirt made for him by the bride but on his wedding-day and at his burial, just as the veil of the Japanese bride becomes one day her shroud.

Mr. Hutchinson is seldom tempted to expatiate on the symbolism of national marriage customs, for he says it is misleading. It is a pity that the majority of those who write on savage races do not appreciate this truism, instead of allowing themselves to be carried away by what we are quite ready to admit is a fascinating study. Two or three instances occur in this volume in which water and running water undoubtedly are meant to suggest some idea. Among the Zezidi, a sect of Kurds in the eastern highlands of Asia Minor, we are told that the bridegroom when pronouncing the marriage-oath stands in running water so as to wash away the binding nature of his promise. In speaking of the American Indians, the author tells us that the Cherokee, after making the usual presents, takes the maiden to a small stream, where the two join hands over the running water, and that, as we speak of the " River of Life," so " doubtless the Indian and his bride wish that the course of their lives may run smoothly." Now the Cherokee may talk and sing of the " River of Death," as the rest of the American races do and as we do, but we may question if in this beautiful and highly symbolical act he means to suggest the "River of Life." He actually believes in a river to be crossed at death, but his imagination:does not rise to such a subtle simile as the "River of Life's Course." The Macedonian's wedding-cake, a most important feature of these Greek weddings, is placed over a bowl of water and danced round. The use of water, on the whole, points either to its dissolving properties or its cleansing power.

Mr. Hutchinson confines himself mostly to Europe and Asia, though he mentions customs on other continents. Those of savages are often more interesting ethnologically than edifying. He has made a very attractive book out of his subject, though his habit of stringing together the details of the ceremony as they obtain in different parts of the same country prevents the reader from getting a com- plete view of the affair. Of course space forbids the descrip- tion of each ceremony with its variants, but one ceremony thoroughly explained first might afford a clearer view. Still, his method has its advantages, and is suggestive. In several cases he is awkwardly situated as regards his authorities, who have a habit of differing. The fact is, in some countries, no stranger, however painstaking and however long be may have been a resident, really gets to the bottom of some customs. And if he is driven to put a question he is sure to be lied to. Marriage Customs has not, we should say, been an easy book to write, but Mr. Hutchinson has arranged

his matter with considerable skill, and made it readable and interesting to the general reader. One of the best things in the book is the description from a lady's diary of the magni- ficent wedding of a Polish nobleman's daughter a hundred years ago.