were once performed at dolmens. Thus, one in North-west Holstein, near Albersdorf, is situated in a plain called "De Brut's Camp," a name which is interpreted to mean "The Bride's Plain," where, according to tradition, marriages used to be solemnised.[1] Young girls come to French dolmens to pray for a lover, and young brides to make vows in the hope of bearing a child, just as girls in England still go to the Rollright Stones to procure oracles of marriage.[2] With such stones in many places an aphrodisiacal cultus is associated, and a visit to them is considered efficacious in cases of barrenness.[3] In England we have the stone at Guisborough in Cleveland on which brides are made to stand, and the Wishing Chair in Finchale Priory Church, of which we are told that "tradition says that this seat was formerly of great repute, and though of stone, it appears much worn by frequent suitors for pregnancy;" Bede's Chair at Jarrow is believed to be efficacious in the same way, and probably most of the chairs used for this purpose were originally of stone, or contained a sacred stone, like the Coronation Chair of Westminster.[4] It is only quite recently that the "Plechting" or "Plighting Stone o' Lairg" has been removed from Sutherlandshire to Canada,[5] and every Irish girl knows that at a dolmen she can never refuse to allow herself to be kissed.
Similar customs connecting marriage with stones are widely spread m India. The Mângs and Kolîs of Bombay make the bride stand in a basket in which a stone is placed; and among the Berads the bridegroom stands on a stone, and the bride in a basket of millet.[6] In Bengal, the Kâyasth
- ↑ Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland, ii., 496.
- ↑ Borlase, op. cit., ii., 580; Folk-Lore, vi., 29.
- ↑ Borlase, op. cit., iii., 846.
- ↑ Denham Tracts, i., 109 seq.
- ↑ Folk-Lore, viii., 399. The Gothic custom was: "Uplandi dicunt stă pă breda sten, lapidi lato insistere, quod est foedus jungere." Ihne, Lex S. Goth, i., 262.
- ↑ Bombay Gazetteer, xx., 173, 155; xxiii., 95.
