Mordvins are of opinion that toleration and patience must be pushed to their extreme limit before such courses are adopted. There are a couple of sayings which illustrate their point of view. A Moksha says, “Wedlock is a fetter,” and an Erza, that “Wedlock has forged together, no one can break it open.” But this tenet is, I imagine, of recent growth, for Lepekhin, in 1768 (op. cit., p. 106), averred that in heathen times the Mordvins had the right of selling their wives and children, and taking others. For a widow to re-marry is not considered in the least reprehensible, and is of frequent occurrence, for they have no theories about a future world in which a husband and wife will again meet. Among the Erza she must always dedicate six weeks to the memory of her late husband, after then she may think of marrying again. The Moksha are stricter in one respect, in requiring her to wait for a whole year; but then she is at liberty to live where she will, while an Erza widow must reside with her father-in-law, either for the rest of her life, or till she finds another husband.
A Mordvin who has lost his wife is much inclined to marry a sister-in-law. Writing in 1783, Milkovich relates the following wooing ceremony, which is very similar to the one already described at p. 423. If the man was refused in the first instance by his father-in-law, he laid secretly a small loaf on the table of the latter, with the words, “Get me my sister-in-law.” Having done this, he ran away, was pursued, and if caught, received a sound thrashing. But if he was lucky enough to escape, he was given his sister-in-law in marriage.
Having now given a description of Mordvin marriage customs, I shall first make a few observations, and then recapitulate the main incidents, the better to compare them with similar points of resemblance in Slav, Finno-Ugrian, Turkish, and Mongol marriage ceremonies, though I have not been able to find very full accounts of some of these.
Marriage Restrictions.—We cannot be quite sure whether the Mordvins were originally divided into tribes or not, and
