Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/456

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Marriage Customs of the Mordvins.

pail, and decorates the house with linen cloths and towels. The feasting lasts a week or more, according to the means of the parents. Sometimes a whole month elapses before a village settles down into its normal condition.

A wife during her whole life must never show her bare feet to her father and mother-in-law, and on that account women work in boots, for they fear to insult their ancestors.^[1] With the Moksha of Nizhegorod the bride wears nothing on her head for six weeks. She is then invested with one, with a curious ceremony. After a prescribed prayer the mother-in-law or oldest woman of the house mounts upon the roof, opens the smoke-hole, and then gives the young wife a head-dress, with these words: “The old women of thine ancestors wore such an one, and order thee to wear one.”

Among the Moksha of Saratoff, for the first year, the bride is termed Odyrava (young woman), or Vechova (beloved), and she goes about bareheaded. After that period she is invested with a head-dress in the same way as described, and receives the name of Parava (good woman), or Mazava (beautiful woman).^[2]

§ 8. Separations and divorces are extremely rare, for the

↑ So, too, the Yakuts (Böhtlingk, Ueber die Sprache der Jakuten, iii, pt. i, p. 67) do not allow the father, mother, or grown-up relations of a husband to see his wife’s head uncovered or her feet bare. Ostiak women cover their faces before the grown-up men of their husband’s family (Ahlqvist Unter Wogul. u. Ostiak, p. 160). Among the Kirgiz, a young wife must not show herself to her father-in-law or to any male relation of her husband for three years (Vámbéry, Das Türkenvolk, p. 249). From this it is tolerably certain that the Mordvins brought with them from Asia the taboo against a wife showing her bare feet to her father-in-law.
↑ Not receiving the head-dress of a married woman for a year might be compared with De Gaya’s statement (Cérémonies nupt. de toutes les Nations, p. 15) that in Poland young married women were considered girls till they had given birth to a son. The custom seems based upon a similar conception. With the Votiaks, too, a young married woman dresses for months, sometimes more than a year, like a girl. (Georgi, i, 71.)

[1] So, too, the Yakuts (Böhtlingk, Ueber die Sprache der Jakuten, iii, pt. i, p. 67) do not allow the father, mother, or grown-up relations of a husband to see his wife’s head uncovered or her feet bare. Ostiak women cover their faces before the grown-up men of their husband’s family (Ahlqvist Unter Wogul. u. Ostiak, p. 160). Among the Kirgiz, a young wife must not show herself to her father-in-law or to any male relation of her husband for three years (Vámbéry, Das Türkenvolk, p. 249). From this it is tolerably certain that the Mordvins brought with them from Asia the taboo against a wife showing her bare feet to her father-in-law.

[2] Not receiving the head-dress of a married woman for a year might be compared with De Gaya’s statement (Cérémonies nupt. de toutes les Nations, p. 15) that in Poland young married women were considered girls till they had given birth to a son. The custom seems based upon a similar conception. With the Votiaks, too, a young married woman dresses for months, sometimes more than a year, like a girl. (Georgi, i, 71.)

[1]

[2]