Even more widespread and prominent than the custom of offering blood, or
of making a libation, or of overcoming a special barrier, at the
threshold, or of anointing or stamping the posts or lintel of the
doorway as a sign of the covenant, at the time of a marriage, and as a
part of the ceremony, is the habit of causing the bride to cross the
threshold with care, without stepping upon it. This custom is of
well-nigh world-wide observance, and it has attracted the attention of
anthropologists and students of primitive customs. A favorite method of
explaining it has been by calling it a survival of the practice of
“marriage by capture;” but this is nothing more than an unscientific
guess, in defiance of the truth that persistent popular customs have
their origin in a sentiment, and not in a passing historic practice. The
earliest mentions of this custom, of the bride’s crossing the threshold
without stepping on it, show it as a voluntary religious rite; and there
are traces of its recognition in this light from the earliest times
until now.
In the Vedic Sutras, or the sacrificial rules of the ancient Hindoo
literature, it is specifically declared that a bride, on entering her
husband’s home, shall step across the threshold, and not upon it. She is
not lifted over the door-sill, but she voluntarily crosses it. Thus it
is said: “When (the bridegroom with his bride) has come to his house, he
says to her, ‘Cross (the threshold) with thy right foot first; do not
stand on the threshold.’”[92] In this ancient ceremony, grains of rice
are poured on the heads of the bridegroom and his bride.[93] This modern
custom has, therefore, a very early origin. And again: “He makes her
enter the house (which she does) with her right foot. And she does not
stand on the threshold.”[94]
Putting the right foot forward seems to be a matter of importance in
various primitive religions. “Put your right foot first” is a maxim
ascribed to Pythagoras.[95] In his description of the proportions of a
temple, the Roman architect Vitruvius said: “The number of steps in
front should always be odd, since, in that case, the right foot, which
begins the ascent, will be that which first alights on the landing of
the temple.”[96] A Muhammadan is always careful to put his right foot
first in crossing over the threshold of a mosk.[97]
Among the Albanians, when the bride is taken to the home of the
bridegroom, accompanied by the _vlam_, or “the friend of the
bridegroom,” it is said that “particular care is taken that the
threshold should be crossed with the right foot foremost.”[98] Here, as
in India, the crossing of the threshold is a voluntary act. The bride is
not lifted over, but crosses of her own accord. If she be veiled, the
lifting is a necessity.
In Madagascar, “on entering a house, especially a royal house, it is
improper to use the left foot on first stepping into it. One must ‘put
one’s best (or right) foot foremost.’”[99]
The bride, in Upper Syria, is sometimes carried across the threshold of
the bridegroom’s house by friends of the bridegroom.[100] She, of
course, is veiled.
When the bride reaches the outer gate of her husband’s residence, in
Egypt, the bridegroom meets her, enveloped as she is in her cashmere
shawl, clasps her in his arms, and carries her across the threshold, and
up to the doorway of the female apartments.[101]
In portions of Abyssinia, the bridegroom carries his bride from her home
to his, bearing her across the threshold as he enters his house.[102]
So, also, it is among the more primitive tribes in West Africa. The
bride is carried over the threshold in a rude chair, or on the shoulders
of her friends, into her new home.[103]
There are traces of a similar custom in the marriage ceremonies of
ancient Assyria.[104]
Again, it is said to be found among the Khonds of Orissa,[105] the
Tatars,[106] and the Eskimos.[107]
In ancient Greece[108] and in ancient Rome[109] the lifting of the bride
over the threshold of her new home was an important part of the marriage
ceremony. Classic writers had their explanations of this custom, as
certain modern anthropologists have theirs, but the origin of the
ceremony was earlier than they imagined.
In unchanging China the use of fire on the threshold altar, in
connection with the marriage ceremony, is continued to the present day.
The bride is borne in a sedan-chair to the house of the bridegroom,
accompanied by a procession of friends and musicians. “On arriving at
the portal of the house, the bridegroom taps the door of the sedan-chair
with his fan, and in response, the instructress of matrimony, who
prompts every act of the bride, opens the door and hands out the still
enshrouded young lady, who is carried bodily over a pan of lighted
charcoal, or a red-hot coulter laid on the threshold, while at the same
moment a servant offers for her acceptance some rice and preserved
prunes.”[110]
Again, it is burning straw that is thrown upon the door-sill, and is
half extinguished before the Chinese bride is led to step across it. The
instructress says at this point:
“Now, fair young bride, the smoke bestride;
This year have joy, next year a boy.”[111]
Fire, like blood, stands for life in the primitive mind; and fire, like
blood, has its place on the altar. Indeed, as the first threshold altar
was the hearthstone, it was the place of the household fire. The
sacredness of the domestic fire is recognized in all the Hindoo
religious literature; and a Hindoo couple, on beginning their married
life, must have a care to enter a new home bringing their sacred altar
fire with them.[112] In ancient Greece, the mother of the bride
accompanied her daughter to the threshold of her new home, bearing a
flaming torch “kindled at the parental hearth, according to custom
immemorial.”[113] A torch was similarly borne in the Roman marriage
ceremonies.[114] This custom is referred to in the term “hymen’s torch,”
or the “nuptial torch.” “In Cicero’s time, they did not distinguish the
hearth-fire from the Penates, nor the Penates from the Lares.”[115] The
bride, in India, in China, in Greece, and in Rome, worshiped at the
altar-fire of her new home.
A connecting link between the altar fire and the nuptial torch is found
in a marriage custom of the Erza, of the Mordvins, in Russia. On the eve
of the wedding day the bridegroom’s family make ready for the bride. “A
thick candle, and several thinner ones, have ... been made ready for the
occasion. The bridegroom’s father lights the smaller ones before the
holy pictures [in use in families of the Greek Church], but sets up the
large one on the threshold. It is called ‘the house candle.’” The father
then prays for the new couple.[116]
A survival of an ancient Slavic custom, of covenanting together by
crossing together an altar fire, would also seem to exist in Russia in
the practices of young people at the “Midsummer Day” festival. A Russian
writer says of these festivals: “More than once have I had an
opportunity of being present at these nightly meetings, held at the end
of June, in commemoration of a heathen divinity. They usually take place
close to a river or pond; large fires are lighted, and over them young
couples, bachelors and unmarried girls, jump barefoot.”[117]
There is a custom of wooing among the Moksha, of the Mordvins, that
brings the threshold-altar idea into prominence. The parents of the
wooer first make gifts, at their home, to the household goddesses.
“These gifts consist of dough figures of domestic animals, which are
placed under the threshold of the house and of the outside gate, while
prayer is made to the goddesses and to deceased ancestors. The father
[of the bridegroom] then cuts off a corner of a loaf placed on the
table, and at the time of the offering scoops out the inside and fills
it with honey. At midnight he drives in profound secrecy to the house of
the bride elect, places the honeyed bread on the gate-post [of her
house], strikes the window with his whip, and shouts: ‘_Seta!_ I,
_Veshnak Mazakoff_, make a match between thy daughter and my son _Uru_.
Take the honeyed bread from thy gate-post, and pray.’”[118] The images
of domestic animals would here seem to stand for the slaughtered animals
formerly offered at the threshold altar; and the linking of the altars
of the two homes by offerings and prayer would seem to indicate the
desire for a sacred covenant. When the bride is received at the
bridegroom’s house, a notch is cut “with an ax in the door-post to mark
the arrival of a new addition to the family.”
Among the Erza, of the same province, the bride, on the day of “the
girl’s feast,” preceding her marriage, “takes mould [earth] from under
the threshold [of her parental home] with her finger-tips, and thrusts
it into her bosom,” as she goes out to seek a farewell blessing from her
friends. In the bridegroom’s home, meanwhile, a lighted candle is placed
on the threshold of the door; and, in some regions, when he and his
friends go to the bride’s house to bring her to his home, he and they
are met at the door by her parents with the covenanting bread and salt,
and the words, “Be welcome, come within.” As the bride is borne out of
her old home to go to her new one, she and her party “all halt and bow
to the gate, for there, or in the courtyard, is the abode of the god
that protects the dwelling-place. The following prayer is made to him:
‘_Kardas Sarks_, the nourisher, god of the house, do not abandon her
that is about to depart; always be near her just as thou art here.‘”
When she reaches her new home, she is carried (over the threshold), in
the arms of some of her party, into the house of the bridegroom,
carrying a lighted candle.[119]
The custom survived in portions of Scotland, as recently as the
beginning of this century, of lifting a bride over the threshold, or the
first step of the door. A cake of bread, prepared for the occasion, was,
at the same time, broken by the bridegroom’s mother over the head of the
bride. The bride was then led directly to the hearth, and the poker and
tongs, and sometimes the broom, were put into her hands “as symbols of
her office and duty.”
Lifting the bride over the threshold has been practiced in recent times,
in England, Ireland, and the United States.[120]
Both bride and bridegroom were carried, on the shoulders of their
elders, across the threshold of their new home, and laid on their bridal
bed, in the marriage ceremonies of some of the tribes of Central
America. And again the bridegroom carried his bride in this way.[121] In
either case, it was the crossing of the threshold without stepping on it
that was the thing aimed at.