(1.) “after which, he can take another wife, and she another
husband.”—The obscene and demoralising customs attributed to the
Jassen or Yasses are fully and minutely described by the Abbé Chappe
d’Auteroche, who witnessed precisely like ceremonies at Tobolsk, where
marriages amongst the natives were thus celebrated (_Voyage en Sibérie
en 1761_, etc., Paris, 1768, i, 163, _et seq._). Olearius notices
somewhat similar, but certainly milder, doings at Moscow in his time
(_Voyages_, etc., 243); and Pitt (_A True and Faithful Account of the
Religion and Manners of the Mahommetans_, etc., Exon., 1704) recounts
something of the sort as occurring among the Algerines.
It would appear, from a report recently made by the Ethnological
Section of the Imperial Geographical Society of St. Petersburg, that
similar practices, but in a greatly modified form, are in vogue amongst
the peasantry in some parts of Little Russia.—ED.