As the primitive and more natural method of commingling bloods,
in the blood-covenant, by sucking each other’s veins, or by an
inter-transference of blood from the mutually opened veins, was in
many regions superseded by the symbolic laving, or sprinkling, or
anointing, with blood; and as the blood of the lower animals was often
substituted, vicariously, for human blood;--so the blood and wine which
were commingled for mutual drinking in the covenant-rite, or which
were together poured out in libation, when the covenant was between
man and the Deity, came, it would appear, to be represented, in many
cases, by the wine alone. First, we find men pledging each other in a
sacred covenant, in the inter-drinking of each other’s blood mingled
with wine. They called their covenant-draught, “assiratum,” or “vinum
assiratum”; “wine, covenant-filled.” By and by, apparently, they came
to count simple wine--“the blood of grapes”[391]--as the representative
of blood and wine, in many forms of covenanting.
This mutual drinking, as a covenant-pledge, has been continued as an
element in the marriage ceremony, the world over, down to the present
time. It would even seem that the gradual changes in the methods of
this symbolic rite could be tracked, through its various forms in this
ceremony, in different portions of the world. Among the wide-spreading
’Anazeh Bed´ween, the pouring out of a blood libation is still the mode
of completing the marriage-covenant. “When the marriage day is fixed,”
says Burckhardt,[392] “the bridegroom comes with a lamb in his arms
to the tent of the father of his bride, and then, before witnesses,
he cuts its throat. As soon as the blood falls upon the earth, the
marriage ceremony is regarded as complete.” Among the Bed´ween of
Sinai, as Palmer tells us,[393] the bride is sprinkled with the blood
of the lamb, before she is surrendered to the bridegroom. Lane’s
mention of the prominence of outpoured blood at the weddings of the
Copts in Cairo, has already been cited.[394] Among the Arabs, since
the days of Muhammad, wine has been generally abjured, and coffee now
commonly takes its place as a drink, in all ordinary conferences for
covenanting.
In Borneo, among the Dayaks, the bride and the bridegroom sit side
by side, facing the rising sun. Their parents then besprinkle them
with the blood of some animal, and also with water. “Each being next
presented with a cup of arrack, they mutually pour half into each
other's cup, take a draught, and exchange vessels.”[395] In Burmah,
among the Karens, water is poured upon the bride as she enters the
bridegroom’s house. When she is received by the bridegroom, “each one
then gives the other to drink, and each says to the other, ‘Be faithful
to thy covenant.’ This is the proper marriage ceremony, and the parties
are now married.”[396]
The blood of an ox, or a cow, is caused to flow at the door of
the bride’s house, as a part of the marriage ceremony, in Namaqua
Land.[397] A similar custom prevails among the Kafirs of Natal; and an
observer has said of this blood-flowing, in the covenanting rite: “This
appears to be the fixing point of the ceremony”; this is “the real
matrimonial tie.”[398]
Again it is the sharing from the same dish in drinking, as well as in
eating, that the bride and the bridegroom covenant in marriage, in the
Feejee Islands.[399] The liquor that is made the common draught, as a
substitute for the primitive blood-potion, is commonly the spirituous
drink of the region; whether that drink be wine, or arrack, or whiskey,
or beer. The symbolism is the same in every case.
In the Sanskrit, the word _asrij_ signifies both “blood,” and
“saffron.”[400] In the Hindoo wedding ceremony, in Malabar, “a dish
of a liquid like blood, made of saffron and lime,” is held over the
heads of the bride and groom. When the ceremony is concluded, the
newly married couple sprinkle the spectators with this blood-like
mixture;[401] which seems, indeed, not only here but in many other
cases, in India, to have become a substitute for the covenanting blood.
Reference has already been made to its use in connection with the
covenant of the nose-ring; and the saffron colored cord of the wedding
necklace, among the Brahmans, has also been mentioned.[402]
A still more remarkable illustration of this saffron mixture in lieu of
blood, in formal covenanting, in India, is found in its use in the rite
of “adoption.” In India, as elsewhere throughout the East, the desire
of every parent to have a son is very strong. A son is longed for, to
inherit the parental name and possessions, to perform the funeral rites
and the annual ceremonies in honor of his parents; and, indeed, “it is
said in the Dattaka-Mimansa, ‘Heaven awaits not one who is destitute
of a son.’” When, therefore, parents have not a son of their own, they
often formally adopt one; and, in this ceremony, saffron-water seems to
take the place of blood, in the sacred and indissoluble covenant of
transfer.[403] So prominent indeed is this element of the saffron-water
drinking--as the substitute for blood-drinking--in the covenant of
adoption, that the adopted children of parents are commonly spoken of
as their “water-of-saffron children.” “Is it good to adopt the child,
and give it saffron-water?” is a question that “occurs eight times
in the book of fate called Sagā-thevan-sāsteram.” Formal sacrifices
precede the ceremony of adoption, and mutual feasting follows it. The
natural mother of the child, in his transfer to his new parents by
adoption, hands with him a dish of consecrated saffron-water; and both
the child and the blood-symbol are received by the adopting father,
with his declaration that the son is now to enter into all that belongs
to that father. “Then he and his wife, pouring a little saffron water
into the hollow of their hands, and dropping a little into that of the
adoptive child, pronounce aloud before the assembly: ‘We have acquired
this child to our stem, and we incorporate him into it.’ Upon which
they drink the saffron-water, and rising up, make a profound obeisance
to the assembly; to which the officiating Brahmans reply by the word,
‘Asirvadam.’”[404]
It seems to me in every way probable, that in primitive times the blood
of the child adopted, and of the parents adopting him, was partaken
of by the three parties (as now throughout the East, in the case of
the blood-covenanting of friends), in order that the child and his new
parents might be literally of one blood. But, with the prejudice which
grew up against blood-drinking, in India, the saffron-water came to be
used as a substitute for blood; even as the blood of the grape came to
be used instead of human blood, in many other portions of the world.
In China, an important rite in the marriage ceremony is the drinking
of “the wedding wine,” from “two singularly shaped goblets, sometimes
connected together by a red silk, or red cotton, cord, several feet
long.” After their worship of their ancestral tablets, the bride and
the bridegroom stand face to face. “One of the female assistants takes
the two goblets ... from the table, and having partially filled them
with a mixture of wine and honey, she pours some of their contents from
one [goblet] into the other, back and forth several times. She then
holds one to the mouth of the groom, and the other to the mouth of the
bride; who continue to face each other, and who then sip a little of
the wine. She then changes the goblets, and the bride sips out of the
one just used by the groom, and the groom sips out of the one just used
by the bride, the goblets oftentimes remaining tied together [by the
red cord]. Sometimes she uses one goblet [interchanging its use between
the two parties] in giving the wine.”[405] The Rev. Chester Holcombe,
who has been a missionary in China for a dozen years or more, writes me
explicitly: “I have been told that in ancient times blood was actually
used instead of the wine now used as a substitute,” in this wedding-cup
of covenanting.
Again, Professor Douglas says,[406] that for a thousand years or so,
it has been claimed that, at the birth of each two persons who are to
be married, the red cord invisibly binds their feet together; which is
only another way of saying that their lives are divinely inter-linked,
as by the covenant of blood.
In Central America, among the Chibchas, it was a primitive custom
for the bridegroom to present himself by night, after preliminary
bargainings, at the door of his intended father-in-law’s home, and
there let his presence be known. Then the bride would come out to
him, bringing a large gourd of _chica_, a fermented drink made from
the juice of Indian corn; “and coming close to him, she first tasted
it herself, and then gave it to him. He drank as much as he could;
and thus the marriage was concluded.”[407] Among the Bheels of India,
the drinking of the covenant is between the representatives of the
bridegroom, and the parents of the bride, at the time of the betrothal;
but this is quite consistent with the fact that the bride herself is
not supposed to have a primary part in the covenant.[408] It is much
the same also among the Laplanders.[409]
Among the Georgians and Circassians,[410] and also among the
Russians,[411] the officiating priest, at a marriage ceremony,
drinks from a glass of wine, and then the bride and the groom drink
three times, each, from the same glass. The Galatians wedded, with
a _poculum conjugii_, “a wedding cup.”[412] In Greece, the marriage
ceremony concludes by the bride and the groom “drinking wine out of one
cup.”[413] In Switzerland, formerly, the clergymen “took two glasses of
wine, mixed their contents, and gave one glass to the bride, and the
other to the bridegroom.”[414] Among European Jews in olden time, the
officiating rabbi, having blessed a glass of wine, tasted it himself,
and then gave it first to the one and then to the other of the parties
covenanting in marriage.[415]
This custom of covenanting in the wine-cup, at a wedding, is said to
have come into England from the ancient Goths.[416] Its symbolical
significance and its exceptional importance, seems to have been
generally recognized. Ben Jonson calls the wedding-wine a “knitting
cup”[417]--an inter-binding cup. And a later poet asks, forcefully:
“What priest can join two lovers’ hands,
But wine must seal the marriage bands?”[418]
In Ireland, as in Lapland and in India, it was at the betrothal,
instead of at the wedding, that the covenanting-cup--or the “agreement
bottle” as it was called--was shared; and not unnaturally strong
_usquebaugh_, or “water of life,” was there substituted for wine--as
the representative of life-blood.[419]
In Scotland, as in Arabia and in Borneo, the use of blood in
conjunction with the use of a wedding-cup has continued down to recent
times. The “agreement bottle,” or “the bottling,” as it was sometimes
called, preceded the wedding ceremony proper. At the wedding, the
blood of a cock was shed at the covenanting feast. A reference to this
is found in “The Wowing [the Wooing or the Vowing?] of Jok and Jynny,”
among the most ancient remains of Scottish minstrelsy:
“Jok tuk Jynny be the hand,
And cryd ane feist, and slew ane cok,
And maid a brydell up alland;
Now haif I gottin your Jynny, quoth Jok.”[420]
Among the ancient Romans, as also among the Greeks, the outpouring
of sacrificial blood, and the mutual drinking of wine, were closely
linked, in the marriage ceremony. When the substitute victim was ready
for slaying, “the soothsayer drank wine out of an earthen, or wooden,
chalice, called in Latin, _simpulum_, or _simpuvium_. It was in fashion
much like our ewers, when we pour water into the basin. This chalice
was afterward carried about to all the people, that they also might
_libare_, that is, lightly taste thereof; which rite hath been called
_libation_.” The remainder of the wine from the chalice was poured
on to the victim, which was then slain; its blood being carefully
preserved. And these ceremonies preceded the marriage feast.[421] The
wedding wine-drinking is now, however, all that remains of them.
Indeed, it would seem that the common custom of “drinking healths,”
or of persons “pledging” each other in a glass of wine, is but a
degenerate modification, or a latest vestige, of the primitive rite
of covenanting in a sacred friendship, by means of commingled bloods
shared in a wine-cup. Certainly this custom prevailed among the old
Norsemen, and among the ancient Romans and Greeks. That it originally
included an idea of a possible covenant with Deity, and of a spiritual
fellowship, is indicated in the fact that “the old Northmen drank the
‘minni’ [the loving friendship] of Thor, Odin, and Freya; and of kings,
likewise, at their funerals.” So again there were “such formulas as
‘God’s minnie!’ [and] ‘A bowl to God in heaven!’”[422]
The earlier method of this ceremony of pledging each other in wine,
was by all the participants drinking, in turn, out of a common bowl;
as Catiline and his fellow-conspirators drank their blood and wine
in mutual covenant; and as the Romans drank at a wedding service.
In the Norseland, to-day, this custom is continued by the use of a
drinking-bowl, marked by pegs for the individual potation; each man as
he receives it, on its round, being expected to “drink his peg.” And
even among the English and the Americans, as well as among the Germans,
the touching of two glasses together, in this health-pledging, is a
common custom; as if in symbolism of a community in the contents of the
two cups. As often, then, as we drink each other’s healths, or as we
respond to any call for a common toast-drinking, we do show a vestige
of the primeval and the ever sacred mutual covenanting in blood.