that no such ceremonies existed. Indeed late on into the Middle Ages cohabitation alone constituted matrimony,—cohabitation often secret at first, but afterwards acknowledged, when, instead of going round under cover of night to visit his mistress, the young man brought her back publicly to his parents’ house. Mistress, wife, and concubine were thus terms which were not distinguished, and the woman could naturally be discarded at any moment. She indeed was expected to remain faithful to the man with whom she had had more than a passing intimacy, but no reciprocal obligation bound him to her. Thus the wife of one of the gods is made to address her husband in a poem which says:
“Thou . . . . indeed, being a man, probably hast on the various island-headlands that thou seest, and on every beach-headland that thou lookest on, a wife like the young herbs. But I, alas! being a woman, have no man except thee; I have no spouse except thee,” etc., etc.[1]
In this sombre picture the only graceful touch is the custom which lovers or spouses had of tying each other’s girdles when about to part for a time,—a ceremony by which they implied that they would be constant to each other during the period of absence.[2] What became of the children in cases of conjugal separation does not clearly appear. In the only instance which is related at length, we find the child left with the father; but this instance is not a normal one.[3] Adoption is not mentioned in the earliest traditions; so that when we meet with it later on we shall probably be justified in tracing its introduction to Chinese sources.
Of death-bed scenes and dying speeches we hear but little, and that little need not detain us. The burial rites are more important. The various ceremonies observed on such an occasion are indeed not explicitly detailed. But we gather thus much: that the hut tenanted by the deceased was abandoned,—an ancient custom to whose former existence the removal of the capital at the commencement of each new sovereign’s reign long continued to bear witness,—and that the body
