Abstract
GYPSY MARRIAGE CUSTOMS IN EASTERN RTJMELIA.—In the course of a correspondence on the language and conditions of the gypsies of Eastern Rumelia which passed between Dr. A. G. Paspati and Smart and Crofton in 1879, when the first named was in Constantinople, some interesting details were given of gypsy betrothal and marriage customs. In one letter of the series, which is published in Part 3, vol. 5 of the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, it is stated that the friends, male and female, of the bridegroom go to his intended bride's residence and demand her of her father. If he consents, the bridegroom and his friends go again to the father's house the next day and each receives a present, generally a handkerchief. The bride and bridegroom are then left alone while the party adjourns to an adjacent wineshop, where they remain until evening. The bride and bridegroom dine together, drinking out of the same wooden bottle as a sign of love. After dinner the bridegroom leaves and the betrothal is considered valid. On the Friday before the wedding, a friend of the bridegroom goes with a wooden bottle to the bride, offering the groom's congratulations, and then with a donkey goes to the forest to cut wood for the ceremony. In the evening of the same day paste is kneaded for a cake to be baked and eaten on the wedding day. On the following day relatives of the groom carry the dowry to the bride. On the Sunday after the wedding the transparent red veil worn by the bride is taken off her face by the bridegroom's man by means of two slender vine sticks and laid on a rose-bush. He then carries two buckets of water on his shoulders taken from any fountain, and these the bride oversets thrice. The fourth time she follows him to the house of the bridegroom, kissing the hands of all passers-by.
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Research Items. Nature 119, 174–176 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119174a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119174a0