232 The Lifting of the Bride.
bride and bridegroom were besieged by a small knot of people, having ropes in their hands, who had gathered together for the purpose of carrying out the old custom of ' chairing.' The young couple struggled to get free, but were ultimately bound hand and foot, and a somewhat serious dis- turbance took place." ^ From Glamorganshire, again, we have a case of the newly-married pair being stopped in the village by people holding a band of twisted evergreens and flowers, which the pair could not pass till they paid toll." A friend writes : "The ceremony, I may mention, was practised at my wedding in a country parish adjoining Swansea. No sooner had we got outside the church than we found a string across the path. This was repeated three or four times before we got to the house where the wedding breakfast was held. It was a perfect running of the gauntlet." In Somerset we hear of the gates of the churchyard being barred in the same way.^
Customs of the same kind prevail widely in India. Thus according to the standard ritual in Bihar : " The couple then leave the courtyard and go into the house where the family deity is put. This house is called kohbar. At the door they are stopped by the sister of the bride, who requires the bridegroom to repeat certain verses. The bridegroom demands a present for doing so, and on this being given he repeats the verses."'* More usually in Northern India the married pair are stopped at the door of the house of the bridegroom by his sister or some other near female relative, who will not permit them to enter until she receives a gratuity.
I mention these cases, and many other instances might easily be collected, not as indicating any belief that the customs of "lifting," or "barring," or "chairing," or
' Sixth Series Notes and Queries, xii., 186.
^ Ibid., Second Series, v., 48, 178.
- Ibid., Second Series, v., 178.
■* Grierson, BiliAr Peasant Life, 369.
