by J.F. McLennan.
Originally published in The Argosy (Strahan & Co.) vol.2 #7 (Jun 1866).
I invite you to inspect my show of marriage knick-knacks. It embraces oddities from all the ends of the earth. A pictorial exhibition mainly, with a minimum of pattering. One word at the outset, and then—the show in silence. Let me turn up the lights.
When men were very rude it was a law among them—never mind its origin—that a man should not marry a woman of his own group or tribe. Wives had to be procured from foreign groups. And as the relations of the groups were uniformly hostile, wives could only be procured by fighting for them, or by suddenly catching them or running them down when found alone and unprotected. There are still races of men so rude that they systematically get wives by these methods; there are others with whom the system of capturing women for wives appears in states of progress towards a symbolism; others, again, with whom that system is perfectly symbolized. After the necessity for such a system has been superseded, the people, out of respect to ancient usage, long continue to mimic in their marriages the ancient methods of getting wives.
A marriage ceremony in which any one of these methods is mimicked I call the Form of Capture. This form occurs, then, whenever, after a contract of marriage, it is considered essential to the constitution of the marriage that the bridegroom and his friends should carry off the bride as the prize of victory in a simulated conflict with her relations; should feign to catch or steal her, or to make her a captive after pursuit. Its commonest shape is the simulated conflict; but "bride-catching," and "bride racing," are not unfrequent. The form is also found in various states of disintegration.
Till I made it the subject of a speculation no collection had been made of examples of this form. I have recently discovered several; and no doubt many are yet to be discovered. The authors in whose books they appear are usually ignorant of such a form being observed anywhere except in their own districts, and they have no explanations to offer of the meaning or origin of what they consider a purely local custom. The disadvantage of this is, that the examples have to be picked up one by one; the advantage is, that we may trust the writers, since their narratives are untainted by theory or hypothesis.
My show consists of a collection of the best (known) examples of the form. I shall exhibit, first, cases in which the leading idea symbolised is the capture of the bride after a conflict with her kinsmen, putting to the front some cases in which there is the idea of a siege of the bride's house; I shall next exhibit cases in which the simple "catching" of the bride, or her capture after a race, is feigned; and I shall lastly exhibit some instances of the form in states of disintegration. So, now you know what to expect, I shall without farther preface open the entertainment.
The people of Berry, in France, observe in their marriages several complex ceremonials. Among them is the form of capture, of which we have a lucid description from the skilled pen of George Sand.
The marriage day having arrived, the bride and her friends shut themselves up in the home of the bride, barricade the doors, bar the windows, and otherwise prepare as if for a siege. In due course the bridegroom and his friends arrive, and seek admittance. They try, at first, to obtain it by a variety of ruses made in course of a long conversation between the spokesmen of the parties. For example, they are weary pilgrims wanting rest; robbers fleeing from the police and seeking an asylum. Admittance being refused, they assail and batter at the doors; try, as it were, to take the place by storm. Those within the house become active in its defence. Pistols are fired on both sides, and the barking of dogs, the shouts of the men and outcries of the women, swell the uproar. When they are wearied there is a parley and another conversation, which, like the preceding, is after a prescribed traditionary pattern. They are at last admitted on stating that they have brought a husband and presents for the bride. Then commences a fresh struggle, for the possession of the hearth. The incidents of attack and defence are again simulated, and with such an appearance of reality that broken ribs and heads are the not unfrequent result. The issue, of course, is that the assailants are victorious, the struggle being perconcerted. The bridegroom obtains his bride, and the more peaceful ceremonies of the marriage are proceeded with.
Are the Berricors French? I could believe them to be a Mongolian tribe, or its débris, the ceremony I have described so closely resembles the form of capture as observed among the Mussulmans of India. Among these, in their weddings, when the bridegroom, attended by his friends in procession, arrives at the house of the bride, he finds the gate shut and guarded. He attempts to get in by a ruse. "Who are you that dare obstruct the king's calvalcade?" The answer is, "Why, at night, so many thieves rove about, it is very possible you are some of them." A long jocular conversation follows, ending in a struggle. "At times, out of frolic, there is such pushing and shoving, that frequently many a one falls down and is hurt." The broken ribs and heads again! They are at last admitted on paying a sum of money. Then follows a sham fight within the gates; after which and other ceremorials the bridegroom carries off his bride.
From France to India; from India to Central Africa. Among the inland negroes we again meet the form of a siege. "When the preliminaries of the marriage are adjusted, the bridegroom, with a number of his companions, set out at night and surround the house of the bride, as if intending to carry her off by force. She and her female attendants, pretending to make ail possible resistance, cry aloud for help, but no person appears." The house is quietly stormed and the bride carried off in triumph. Here the bridegroom is the midnight invader of the hamlet, temporarily deserted by its guardians. The braves feign absence; the women unprotectedness. The moment of unprotectedness is the moment of opportunity. There is the siege, but the capture smacks more of theft than robbery.
The symbol of the siege in Transylvania is indistinct. When the bridegroom and his friends arrive at the bride's house they find the door locked. The bridegroom must, as best he can, climb over into the court, open the door from within, and admit his companions. The authority for this disposes of it in three lines, as a matter of little consequence. How much has he omitted? He has stated enough to enable us to recognise the siege shorn of several of its features. It is undoubtedly the form of capture which occurs in this district, in almost all its shapes.
The form of capture among the Circassians takes its shape from the daring of the wild mountaineers. Since there can be no marriage without the pretence of capture, the capture must be feigned in a form to which a Circassian might hold his face before the leaders of his tribe. The marriage day has come; the wedding is being celebrated in the bride's house with noisy feasting and revelry. "Suddenly the bridegroom rushes in and, with the help of a few daring young men," carries off the lady by force. "And by this process she becomes his lawful wife." Details are wanting. But why "the few daring young men?" Doubtless, because the show of opposition is carried a considerable length. There is prearrangement, but that includes resistance; and the games of rude men are apt to be rude. This ceremony, it is said, is observed throughout the Caucasus, and beyond them among the Nogais and Kirghiz.
When these tribesmen become more civilized, in what shape will they retain the form? Perhaps in the shape in which, at Rome, it was observed in the plebeian marriages. In ancient Rome the form of capture was observed in all marriages, but the invasion of the bride's house was feigned only in those of the plebeians. It was essential in these marriages that the bridegroom and his friends should invade the house of the bride, and tear her, with feigned violence, from her mother's lap, or that of her nearest female relative, if her mother were dead or absent. The lady, of course, in the proper lap, waited the bridegroom's coming. To this ceremony Virgil makes allusion in the line—
Quid soceros legere, et gremiis abducere pactas.
It is understood to have been had in view by Apuleius, in the story of the Captive Damsel. The seizure is there vividly described. The bride is dressed in nuptial apparel, and her mother, loading her with kisses, is looking forward to her married life. On a sudden, what seems a band of robbers enters the house. With glittering swords, they make straight for her chamber, in a compact column; and, unopposed by the servants, tear her away from her mother's bosom. The symbol is here suited to the political state. Instead of the rush of wild tribesmen, as in the Caucasus, we have the march of a disciplined soldiery.
In all these cases there is the idea of a siege, or invasion of the bride's house. There is the simulated conflict in the Berricor, Mussulman, and Caucasian examples; in the African, Transylvanian, and Roman examples the form is probably partly disintegrated, but not necessarily, for it might be the practice of a tribe, in their expeditions for wives, to invade their neighbours' hamlets only, or usually, when the braves were absent. In all the examples which come next, the simulation of a conflict is more or less perfect.
I take first the Mongols of the Ortous. The marriage day having arrived, the bridegroom sends early in the morning a deputation to fetch his "betrothed." "When the envoys draw near," says M. Huc, "the relations and friends of the bride place themselves in a circle before the door, as if to oppose the departure of the bride; and then begins a feigned fight, which of course terminates in the bride being carried off. She is placed on a horse, and having been led thrice round her paternal home, is taken at full gallop to the tent which has been prepared for her near the dwelling of her father-in-law." Thereafter the relations and friends of both families repair to the wedding feast.
The same ceremony is observed in Kalmuck marriages, especially in those of the noble or princely class. After the bargain for the bride, the bridegroom sets out on horseback, accompanied by the chief nobles of his horde, to carry her off. "A sham resistance," says De Hell, "is always made by the people of her camp, in spite of which she fails not to be borne away on a richly-caparisoned horse, with loud shouts and feux de joie." There are various hordes of the Kalmucks, and we find the form of capture among them, not only as the simulated conflict, but also as "bride-racing," and in disintegrated forms.
In Muscovy, Lithuania, and Livonia, down till the sixteenth century, might be seen the reality which is symbolised in the two preceding cases. An actual capture, and its incidents, always preceded the negotiations for the consent of the bride's parents, which by this time Christianity had made essential to marriage. The reality is to be seen to this day (as an exceptional and irregular proceeding, however) among both Kalmucks and Mongols. A young man wants a wife, and knows of an eligible girl living in a certain youl. If her relations decline his suit, or he cannot pay the price they demand, his kinsmen mount their horses, sweep down on the place, and capture the girl. They have either to conquer her friends then and there, or they are pursued, and the result is "a cavalry engagement." Were De Hell's account expanded it would probably furnish us with the semblance of such a fight among the Kalmucks. Curiously enough, we find the form of capture in this shape at home among the Welsh. Lord Kames says that the following ceremony was in his day, or at least had till shortly before, been customary among the Welsh. "On the morning of the wedding, the bridegroom, attended by his friends on horseback, demands the bride. Her friends, who are likewise on horseback, give a positive refusal, upon which a mock scuffle ensues. The bride, mounted behind her nearest kinsman, is carried off, and is pursued by the bridegroom and his friends, with loud shouts, It is not uncommon, on such an occasion, to see two or three hundred sturdy Cambro-Britons riding at full speed, crossing and jostling, to the no small amusement of the spectators. When they have fatigued themselves and their horses, the bridegroom is suffered to overtake his bride. He leads her away in triumph, and the scene is concluded with feasting and festivity." This is perfect. It is valuable also as hinting that the simulated fight might pass into mere "bride-racing."
Is it credible that the Welsh had an early experience as nomad horsemen? And had the Irish such an experience? In the Irish example of the simulated fight, we again have the parties on horseback, mimicking war in old Scythic fashion. "In their marriages," says Sir Henry Piers, "especially in those counties where cattle abound, the parents and friends on each side meet on the side of a hill, or, if the weather be cold, in some place of shelter, about midway between both dwellings. If agreement ensue, they drink the agreement bottle, which is a good bottle of usquebaugh, and this goes merrily round." Arrangements are then made for the payment of the marriage dowry, and probably for "the bringing home." "On the day of bringing home, the bridegroom and his friends ride out and meet the bride and her friends at the place of meeting. Being come near each other, the custom was of old to cast short darts at the company that attended the bride, but at such a distance that seldom any hurt ensued. Yet it is not out of the memory of man that the Lord Hoath on such an occasion lost an eye!" Of older date, no doubt, there was the perfect semblance of a battle. The symbol, as recorded, is partly disintegrated, but it is very singular to find, in the simulation, of the bridegroom's attack, down to the seventeenth century, the short darts of old Celtic warfare.
Piers speaks of "the bringing home." A correspondent informs me of an Irish ceremony called "Hauling home the bride." "It consists," he says, "of a pretended abduction, after the church ceremony has been performed, and illustrates in a curious manner the perpetuation of the idea of marriage by capture." A gentleman living in the north of Ireland, a member of the Irish Bar and of the Irish Academy, assures me that among the peasantry in Derry, within his recollection, the system of capture existed in a stage of transition towards a symbolism. The bridegroom and his friends surrounded the woman's house at night, seized her, and carried her off to the mountains, where they lodged her in the safe keeping of some neutral persons. They then opened negotiations with her parents for their consent to the marriage! This is the exact stage of transition which was reached, according to Magnus and Gaya, two or three centuries ago in parts of Prussia, Russia, and Poland. In Ireland it is well known abduction is hardly yet popularly regarded as a crime. To illustrate the state of mind of the people of Derry about marriage, my informant says, that on one occasion, being uncertain of the date of an occurrence, he asked his man-servant if he remembered it. The answer was, "Oh sure, and it was the year we ran off with mistress!"
In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, and in some districts in Aberdeenshire, it is common for the parties of the bride and bridegroom to go in procession to a point of meeting midway between their dwellings, and on the way to the minister's. I am informed that as the parties approach they fire volleys at one another from pistols and muskets, and that on the way home the marriage procession is fired at nearly all the way. Is this the simulated conflict? I should not doubt it but for the commonness of employing firearms in the Highlands in all demonstrations of joy. It most probably, however, is the form of capture. Mr. Logan, in his book on the Highland clans, gives some facts which go to show that the Highlanders had anciently the system of capture, and till lately observed the form. And he does so apropos of Sir Henry Piers' account, above cited, of the form in Ireland.
I am away again to the East and back to the Tartar stock. The Kookies, of whom there are several tribes on the north-east frontier of India, are fair representatives of the whole population, from Cape Negrais northwards, through Chittagong and Tipperah, to the Naga settlements above Munniepore. They observe the form. "The Kookies," says Colonel McCulloch, "have no marriage ceremony. When they go to bring away the bride, after having paid for her, they usually receive more kicks than halfpence from the village; that is, they usually get well beaten. But, after the fight is over, the woman is quietly brought from her home and given to the party that came for her, outside the village gate." This is peculiar, as victory appears on the bride's side; but it is undoubtedly the simulated conflict. There is rough usage, but not really fighting, as is proved by the issue.
In the hill tracts of Orissa we find the simulated conflict among the Khonds. It is somewhat disintegrated. The marriage being agreed upon, a feast, to which the families of the parties equally contribute, is prepared at the dwelling of the bride. "To the feast," says Major McPherson, "succeed dancing and song. When the night is far spent, the principals in the scene are raised by an uncle of each upon his shoulders, and borne through the dance. The burdens are suddenly exchanged, and the uncle of the youth disappears with the bride. The assembly divides into two parties: the friends of the bride endeavour to arrest, those of the bridegroom to cover, her flight; and men, women, and children mingle in mock conflict, which is often carried to great lengths." "On one occasion," says Major-General Campbell, "I heard loud cries proceeding from a village close at hand. Fearing some quarrel, I rode to the spot, and there I saw a man bearing away upon his back something enveloped in an ample covering of scarlet cloth; he was surrounded by twenty or thirty young fellows, and by them protected from the desperate attacks made upon him by a party of young women. On seeking an explanation of this novel scene, I was told that the man had just been married, and his precious burden was his blooming bride, whom he was conveying to his own village. Her youthful friends, as it appears is the custom, were seeking to regain possession of her, and hurled stones and bamboos at the head of the devoted bridegroom until he reached the confines of his own village. Then the tables were turned, and the bride was fairly won; and off her young friends scampered, screaming and laughing, but not relaxing their speed till they reached their own village." The same ceremony, or some modification of it, may be presumed to prevail among the Koles, the Ghonds, and the other congeners of the Khonds; but we are without authority on the subject.
Major McPherson had been in the Caucasus as well as in India, and was aware of the form of capture as a marriage ceremony among the Circassians. He seems to have been much struck by its singularity, and mentions that a similar ceremony is observed among the Hindus. Unfortunately, he gives no details, and, apart from his statement, I have no authority that the simulated conflict is observed by the Hindus. I have authority, however, for the statement that in a disintegrated shape the form of capture was an ancient Hindu marriage rite. This, as a much disintegrated shape, I shall notice hereafter.
If the Hindus and Romans, of high Aryan lineage, had the form, how was it with the Greeks? They also observed the form of capture. The evidence that they observed it otherwise than as "bride-racing," relates to the Dorians only; but what was true of them was, most probably, true anciently of all the Greek tribes; for the Dorians differed from the others chiefly through having better preserved the ancient customs.
Demaratus, says Herodotus, robbed Leotychides of his bride, his betrothed, by forestalling him in carrying her off and marrying her. This was actual abduction; but the language implies that it remained for Leotychides, in order to make the lady his wife, that he should go through the form of carrying her off. In other words, capture was, equally with betrothal, requisite as a preliminary of marriage; nay, as the case of Demaratus shows, it made marriage, though there was no preceding contract,—good law among all the ruder races that observe the form. But the matter is not left to inference. Plutarch expressly states that the Spartan bridegroom always carried off the bride with feigned violence. He says, indeed, "with violence." I suppose there was always a good show of it; but the seizure came after the betrothal and was itself concerted. Latterly it sufficed to seize the bride and carry her from one room to another—a disintegrated shape of the form; but anciently there must have been the simulated conflict.
Such are the leading instances of the simulated conflict. Let us now proceed to the cases of bride-racing and bride-catching. Numerous hints in the Greek legends, which it would be tedious to examine, show that the Greeks had the form in the shape of "bride-racing." The story of Atalanta and Hippomenes is familiar, and there are varieties of the story. She is an Arcadian, at first in Thessaly; then in Tegea. She is the daughter of Schœneus, Iasus, or Mænelos; the successful lover is Hippomenes, or Meitanon. The supposition is there were several Atalantas, at least two or three, an Arcadian, Bœotian, and Argeian. This implies the tradition of "bride-racing" in several divisions of Greece.
Philology shows that "bride-racing" was a German institution, as it shows that "bride-catching" was Norse. The German word brûtloufti, "bride-racing," and the old Norse word quên-fang, "wife-catching," are both used in the sense of marriage. "Bride-racing" is thus Aryan; it is also Turanian. "Bride-catching" is thus Aryan; it is also Semitic.
Let us take a Turanian example of bride-racing, and clear our ideas as to what it means. In noticing the simulated conflict among the Kalmucks, I said they had also bride-racing. The ceremony, which is performed on horseback, is described by Dr. Clarke. "A girl is first mounted, who rides off in full speed. Her lover pursues; if he overtakes her she becomes his wife. . . But it sometimes happens that the woman does not wish to marry the person by whom she is pursued. In this case she will not suffer him to overtake her. We were assured that no instance occurs of a Kalmuck girl being thus caught unless she has a partiality to the pursuer. If she dislikes him she rides, to use the language of English sportsmen, 'neck or nought,' until she has completely effected her escape, or until her pursuer's horse becomes exhausted, leaving her at liberty to return and to be afterwards chased by some more favoured lover." That is, the chase, where it leads to marriage, as it commonly does, is a mere form, the woman meaning to be caught. As it is always preceded by a contract, fixing the bride's price and consenting to the marriage, it is undoubtedly a merely symbolical ceremony, in which the idea is that of "the unprotected female" trying to escape from her would-be captor. The chance of escape which it offers to a reluctant bride is an accident of a ceremony, the origin of which cannot possibly be referred to the desire to consult the bride's inclinations.
Vámbéry says that this "marriage ceremonial," no doubt with modifications from case to case, is in use among all the nomads of Central Asia. He describes it in the case of the Turkomans. The young maiden, attired in bridal costume, mounts a high-bred courser, taking on her lap the carcase of a lamb or goat. She sets off at full gallop, followed by the bridegroom and other young men of the party, also on horseback. She has always to strive, by adroit turns, &c., to avoid her pursuers, that no one of them approach near enough to snatch from her the burden in her lap. The chase ends, I suppose, in her being caught. "The game" is called Kökbüri.
But all wild tribes have not troops of horses, like the hordes of Central Asia. When the Australian, who gets his wives by the ancient methods de facto, chases a leubra, it is on foot. Should he ever reduce the race to a symbol, the symbol will certainly represent a foot-race. And this is the form of bride-racing among the natives of Singapore, who also, being accustomed to boating, have an aquatic variety of the form. They hold great jubilees, at the fruit season, near the groves of the tribe, which often lie together, and during these jubilees their marriages take place. "The marriage ceremony," says Mr. Cameron, "is a simple one, and the new acquaintance of the morning is often the bride of the evening. On the part of the suitor it is more a matter of arrangement with the parents than of courtship with the daughter; but there is a form generally observed which reminds one strongly of the old tale of Hippomenes and Atalanta. If the tribe is on the bank of a lake or stream, the damsel is given a canoe and a double-bladed paddle, and allowed a start of some distance; the suitor, similarly equipped, starts off in chase. If he succeeds in overtaking her, she becomes his wife, if not, the match is broken off. . . It is seldom that objection is offered at the last moment, and the race is generally a short one. The maiden's arms are strong, but her heart is soft, and her nature warm, and she soon becomes a willing captive. If the marriage takes place where no stream is near, a round circle of a certain size is formed, the damsel is stripped of all but a waistband, and given half the circle's start in advance; and if she succeeds in running three times round before her suitor comes up with her, she is entitled to remain a virgin; if not, she must consent to the bonds of matrimony. As in the other case, but few outstrip their lovers." This is the Kalmuck case over again. Singapore is not singular in the equatorial regions. We find the form both as bride-racing and as bride-catching in various quarters in the islands of the Pacific.
Let us now clear our ideas as to "bride-catching." It is the case of the unprotected female without a start and a run for it. Here is the Australian reality. When a man meets a woman alone, whom he likes, he tells her to follow him. If she refuses he beats her, knocks her down, and carries her off. Rough gallantry! The mimicry of this is the form as "bride-catching,"—differing from the reality only in the degree of violence, and in its following on a contract of marriage. It is Aryan, as we saw, being Norse; it is Turanian, being observed by the Tunguzes and Kamchadales; it is Semitic, being the custom of many Arab tribes, notably of the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, and the Mezeyne of the Sinai Peninsula. The women, as a tribute to custom, must resist the capture. As Burckhardt says of the Bedouins, "the more the woman struggles, bites, kicks, cries, and strikes, the more she is applauded ever after by her own companions."
The form in this shape is of frequent occurrence among the native races of America. The way in which the capture is made among the tribes on the Amazons is very singular. "When a young man wishes to have the daughter of another Indian, his father sends a message to say he will come, with his son and relations, to visit him. The girl's father guesses what it is for, and, if he is agreeable, makes preparations for a grand festival. This lasts perhaps two or three days, when the bridegroom's party suddenly seize the bride, and hurry her off to their canoes. No attempt is made to prevent them, and she is then considered as married." Among the Terra del Fuegians we find bride-catching pure and simple. "As soon," says Captain Fitzroy, speaking of the Fuegians, "as a youth is able to maintain a wife by his own exertions in fishing or bird-catching, he obtains the consent of her relations, and does some piece of work, such as helping to make a canoe, preparing seal-skins, &c., for her parents. Having built or stolen a canoe for himself, be watches for an opportunity, and carries off his bride. If she is unwilling, she hides herself in the woods until her admirer is heartily tired of looking for her, and gives up the pursuit, but this seldom happens." Although the marriage is the subject of a contract, he must proceed in its constitution as if acting without consent. A little farther north, among the Coinmen and Caribs, the contract is unknown, and the usual way of getting a wife is fighting for or catching one.
Accompanying the form, in some of the cases of "bride-catching," is a custom which must have been handed down from a state of the greatest "wildness"—a state lower than savagery. Among the Mezeyne, for example, after the capture, the woman is let loose and flies to the mountains. The husband goes in search of her. For a long time the only intercourse between them takes place in the hills. The clandestine intercourse, after marriage, between the Spartan husband and wife, must have been the fainter tradition of this. The same custom prevailed in Crete. In Africa, in some districts, husband and wife for years meet only in the woods. The stealthy communication of husband and wife is required by custom also among the Nogais and Circassians.
We have just seen the form among some tribes of the Semites. Had the Jews this ceremony? I think it is almost certain they had. They had traditions of the system of capturing women for wives, de facto, and though they were an endogamous people, forbidden to marry foreign women, yet they allowed marriages with such women when made captive in war. The provision for marriage with foreign women, if captured, among tribes which in no other case allowed of marriage with foreign women, indicates a remarkable association between capture and marriage. It is not easy to believe that such a regulation, existing among endogamous tribes, is referable to the feeling that a victorious warrior should have the full disposal of spoils of victory. It is much more likely that it is a relic of a time when the tribes—or rather the race from which they sprung—were not endogamous, but subject to that primitive tribal law against marriage within the tribe, which was everywhere the origin of the system of actual capture. And that system is symbolised to this day among other tribes of the same race. These facts and considerations are supported by some direct evidence. The writer of the article, Marriage, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, remarks that the Old Testament phrase, "taking a wife," would seem to require to be taken in its literal meaning in the run of cases; "the taking" being the chief ceremony in the constitution of marriage. If this is correct, it means that the Jews observed the form, for in many cases where the phrase occurs we know the marriages were preceded by contracts.
It remains that I should exhibit some instances of the Form of Capture in states of disintegration. Though everything connected with marriage is religiously regarded, yet are its ceremonies subject, like everything else, to the laws of growth and decay. In many cases the Form of Capture must have passed away; in many it is in the course of being obliterated. The marvel is that, the human race being so old, a ceremony which draws back to its wild youth should not long since have wholly disappeared. The progress of mankind, however, has not only been slow, but unequal in the different families. Thus it is that in our own day exist, at one and the same time, in different quarters, the reality of capture, the reality in stages of transition towards a symbolism, the form, and the form in the last stages of decay. Among the very rudest races we find the reality; among the ruder races, and in the ruder and more unmixed portions of the more civilized, we find the form; here and there, in the upper strata of the most civilized, we discern the mere shadow of the form. When the Form of Capture was perfect among the plebeians in Rome it had dwindled to scarcely recognizable signs among the aristocracy. It is now perfect among the primitive Berricors in modern France, as it was among the primitive Dorians in ancient Greece. It was till lately perfect in homogeneous Wales, when in heterogeneous England it had become disintegrated in the highest degree. Where many races are blended, many customs are jumbled. And the jumbling infers decay of respect for them and ultimately their obliteration.
The simulated fight is disintegrated when the symbol represents attack merely on the one side, as in the Irish and Roman examples, without representing resistance on the other. It is further disintegrated when neither the attack nor the defence is represented, and the tradition is satisfied by some faint symbol of the woman's captivity. With the Patricians at Rome it sufficed that the bridegroom should carry the bride over the threshold of his house, "because," as Plutarch says, "the Sabine women did not go in voluntarily, but were carried in by violence;" that he should part her hair with a spear "in memory of the first marriages being brought about in a warlike manner," a symbol full of suggestions. There is no doubt these are what they bear to be—traces of the form of capture; faint signs taking the place of the perfect form. The Kökbüri, as described by Vámbéry, is become "a game," a reflection of Kalmuck bride-racing, as described by Clarke. The disintegration once began, the ultimate shape or relic of the form depends on the infinite variety of accidents. There may remain a single sign or act, a pastime or a game, or a ridiculous proceeding with no apparent meaning. I shall be surprised if the reader, as he learned of the hurling of bamboos after the bridegroom among the Khonds, did not think of the hurling of old shoes after him among ourselves. It is a sham assault on the person carrying off the lady; and in default of any more plausible explanation, and I know of none such, it may fairly be considered as probable that it is the form of capture in the last stage of disintegration.
Greece, like Rome, presents us with the form in a disintegrated shape. In Sparta, latterly, it was enough for the bridegroom to catch up the lady and carry her from one room to another. So, among some of the Kalmuck hordes, the necessity for the appearance of a capture is satisfied by the act of putting the bride by force upon horseback when she is about to be conducted to the bridegroom's hut. And this minimum of pretence suffices in many cases. In North Friesland a young fellow called the bride-lifter lifts the bride and her two bridesmaids upon the waggon in which the newly-married are to travel to their home. In Pennsylvania the bridegroom himself carried the bride in his arms out of her father's house and set her on the waggon. In Egypt, when the bride, after her procession, arrives at the bridegroom's door, he issues forth, "suddenly clasps her in his arms, as if by violence, and runs off with her as a prize" into the house—the Roman threshold-crossing over again. The Bedouin bridegroom must force his bride to enter his tent; the Mussulman of India, the same who observes the mock siege, must carry her in like the old Roman. A similar custom existed in France, at least in some provinces, in the seventeenth century. In all these cases the shape of the form was analogous to that prescribed in the Sutras to the Hindus. At a vital stage of the marriage ceremony a strong man and the bridegroom forcibly drew the bride and made her sit down on a red ox-skin. Dr. Weber says this was one of the essential ceremonies in the constitution of the Hindu marriage. In the order of proceedings it followed the solemn seven steps which riveted the contract.
I have not attempted to classify these examples according to the races which furnish them. The races themselves have, I think, yet to be satisfactorily classified, and till that is done we must take human phenomena in the mass as we find them. So far as the philological classification goes the form of capture is at once Indo-European, Turanian, and Semitic. It is human; and the frequency of its occurrence is such as strongly to suggest that the phase of society in which it originated existed at some time or other almost everywhere. The instances which I have given fix the attention on a great many geographical points. And nothing in nature stands by itself. Each example leads us to contemplate a great area over which the form of capture was once observed, just as a fossil fish in rock on a hill-side forces us to conceive of the whole surrounding country as at one time under water. Were I to examine all the customs which seem to me connected with the form, there would be few primitive races with which I should not have to deal. The form, which of old was so well marked in the peninsulas of Italy and Greece, may be traced thence, on the one hand, northwards through France and Britain, south-westwards through Spain, and northeastwards through Prussia; on the other hand, northwards through ancient Thessaly and Macedonia into the mountainous regions on the Black Sea and the Caspian. It is now observed throughout Central Asia and everywhere among the races of the Mongolidæ. We may assume it of frequent occurrence in Africa, as among the red men of America, and the inhabitants of the Pacific islands. It occurs among several of the Semitic races. It occurs among the Hindus, and may be assumed to have been common among the aboriginal inhabitants of the plains of India, of whom we have well-preserved specimens in the Khonds of Orissa and the Kookies of Cachar.
Here ends the entertainment. In the Code of Menu is described the marriage called Racshasa. "The seizure of a maiden by force from her home, after her kinsmen and friends have been slain in battle, or wounded, and their houses broken open, is the marriage called Racshasa." "For a military man" this marriage, "as when a girl is made captive by her lover after a victory over her kinsmen," is "permitted by law." The code legitimated as marriage the union of the soldier with the woman he had fought for and won at the point of the sword. This privilege of the military was a relic of the system of capturing women for wives which had prevailed among the Hindus. I again hold up a light, in which you may see the significance of the mock sieges, and invasions, and fights, and flights of my collection. In these, at first sight unmeaning symbols, what a history! In our ancestry, what humiliation! My show is transformed in the bloody light, and every oddity becomes a horror. Race after race has told the same tale. "With us there was at first no marriage but the Racshasa. There was neither wooing, nor love, nor pity; and the wife knew not even to bow her head as she followed her lord over the dead bodies of her kinsmen." But with the lesson of humility there is a word of hope. If we, of the higher races of men, are yet of those who once were in such a case, and have come to be what we are; while with humble hearts we regard our origin and first estate, we may hopefully look to the future as holding in store for our species forms of life purer and higher than the present, by as much as the present are purer and higher than the past.