2. Enter without salutation. 3. Bread, salt, and money laid on table. 4. Eating and drinking [bridegroom takes no part.[1] Bride not present]. 5. Negotiations about kalym, etc. 6. Return home.
Feast of Sacred Pies. § 4a.—1. Assembly of relations at bridegroom’s. 2. Drive to bride’s home, with pies, cake, and strong drink. 3. Welcomed; pies accepted [engagement cannot now be broken off, = hand-striking]. 4. Bride’s girl friends bully and abuse bridegroom’s father.[2] 5. Return home.
Weeping-day.[3] § 5. (The day before the wedding).—1. Before dawn, bride asks for parents’ blessing. 2. Bows outside towards the east five times. 3. Weeps at home, surrounded by friends. 4. Prays at gate, and carried to neighbour’s. Variant.—Goes at dawn to a relation’s [begs for shelter, as she is driven from home]. 5. Bride carried to relation’s in turn.[4] 6. Returns home; offered half-empty ladleful of beer by father. 7. Refuses beer offered by mother. 8. Asks for and receives parents’ blessing. 9. Carried to a neighbour’s. 10. Goes to bed there.
Girls’ Feast.[5] § 5a. (The day before the wedding).—1. Bride leaves home to invite friends. 2. Refused admission on her return. 3. Sends shirt to bridegroom. 4. Her friends praise her.
Variant. § 5b.—1. Bride [in every-day clothes] starts with
- ↑ Probably because he is looked upon as a mere cipher, the arrangements of the marriage resting with the parents alone. This rather points to Russian influence.
- ↑ Quite Turkish; see Vámbéry, op. cit., p. 232; but also Russian.
- ↑ With the Tatars of Kazan and Orenburg, on the eve of the wedding, the bride covers herself with a veil, and her companions visit her to weep with her over her approaching change of state. (Georgi, Descrip., ii, 24.)
- ↑ Part of the day preceding the wedding is spent by the bride in paying farewell visits to her relatives (Ralston, p. 276).
- ↑ This social gathering is the “girls’ party” of the Russians, from whom it has probably been adopted, though the incidents mentioned by Mr. Ralston (op. cit., 271-6) are different.
