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CHAPTER XI.

THE HEARTH FIRE-MARRIAGE-BOUNDARY OAKS-RED HAIR

PEAS.

AGNI, beloved as the hearth fire, is styled in the Vedas "the guest," but he is also worshipped as lord of the house, the family, and the tribe, and god of domestic life and of marriage. In these attributes he corresponds exactly with Thor.

The ceremonies constituting the nuptial solemnity in India are thus described by Colebrooke :*-"The bridegroom goes in procession to the house where the bride's father resides, and is there welcomed as a guest. The bride is given to him by her father in the form usual at every solemn donation, and their hands are bound together with grass. He clothes the bride with an upper and better garment, and the skirts of her mantle and his are tied together. The bridegroom makes oblation to fire, and the bride drops rue on it as an oblation. The bridegroom solemnly takes her hand in marriage. She treads

* Miscell. Essays, i. 224.

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on a stone and mullar. They walk round the fire. The bride steps seven steps, conducted by the bridegroom, and he then dismisses the spectators, the marriage being now complete and irrevocable. In the evening of the same day the bride sits down on a bull's hide, and the bridegroom points out to her the polar star as an emblem of stability. They then partake of a meal. The bridegroom remains three days at the house of the bride's father; on the fourth he conducts her to his own house in solemn procession. She is then welcomed by his kindred; and the solemnity ends with oblations to fire.”

Burning torches were carried in bridal processions at Rome, and the bride always wore the flammeum or flame coloured veil, "for good omen's sake," as Festus says. Her shoes were also of the same colour. The Hindu bride wore a red girdle, the cautuka, a name which in later times designated also the bridal ring.

In Scandinavia the union of man and wife was anciently consecrated by laying Thor's symbol, the hammer, in the bride's lap; and Thursday is still regarded as an auspicious day for marrying. In Germany, where Christian tradition has partially identified Thor with the devil, it is held unlucky to marry on that day. In that country, in old times,

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when the bride first entered her husband's house, she was led three times round the hearth fire. Among other old customs, some of which are not yet extinct, was the carrying of a red banner in marriage processions. In some places, when the bridal pair are setting out for church they are made to step over a firebrand laid on the threshold of the house they are leaving. In other places, after the bride has been formally received in the house where the wedding is to be celebrated, she takes a pair of tongs and a firebrand in each hand, and carries them to the gate of the forecourt, where her friends are waiting to form the wedding procession. In times within living memory the bride wore a lofty headdress of a peculiar form, never used on any other occasion. A band of red silk wound round it was an indispensable part of its adornment. The bridal nosegays of rosemary were always tied with red thread, as they are still in Havelland. In a wood near Dahle there was formerly a great oak tree (now reduced to a stump) to which new married couples used to repair, dance round it three times, and cut a cross upon it. This cross betokened of yore Thor's hammer, the consecrator of marriage.*

Thor's wife was Sif, whose name, signifying "kin,"

* Kuhn, Westf. ii. 44.

BOUNDARY OAKS.

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is the Scottish sib,* and is found in the English gossip, i.e., god-sib, this word having originally denoted the spiritual relationship between the godfathers and godmothers of the same child. The god of the house-fire and guardian of the household and its belongings was the natural protector of the aggregate of families forming the gens or tribe, the village, town, commune, or nation, and of the soil occupied by each of them. Possession was taken of unoccupied or newly purchased land with a hammer, which the new owner cast out as he drove over the ground in a cart, or, in Scandinavia, by kindling a fire upon it;† and the oak, Thor's tree (p. 49), was planted on the boundaries of lands, and lordships great and small. To this usage our English parishes owe their gospel oaks, so called from the custom of having the gospel read under or near them by the clergyman attending the perambulation of the parish boundaries, which took place annually on Ascension day or Holy Thursday, the high festival of Thor in pagan times, when his rites were doubtless celebrated beneath his sacred tree. "It is possible that many of the more famous oak trees yet standing in

"It's guid to be sib to siller." Scots Proverb. ↑ Mannhardt, pp. 197, 227.

296

BOUNDARY OAKS.

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England may date from the days of at least Saxon heathendom. Nearly all are boundary trees, marking the original limit of shire or of manor. Such was the great Shire-oak' which stood at the meeting place of York, Nottingham, and Derby, into which three counties it extended its vast shadow. Wider spreading than the chestnut of the Centi Cavalli' on Mount Etna, the branches of the Shire-oak could afford shelter to 230 horsemen. Such, too, is the 'Crouch' oak at Addlestone, in Surrey, under which Wickliffe preached and Queen Elizabeth dined-one of the ancient border-marks of Windsor Forest, whose name, according to Mr. Kemble, refers to the figure of the cross anciently cut upon it. Trees thus marked are constantly referred to as boundaries in Anglo-Saxon charters."* The writer of this passage is not quite accurate in saying that "the cross withdrew the oak from the dominion of Thor or Odin." More or less it did so in Christian times, but previously to them the cross as well as the tree may have belonged to Thor.

Indra's beard was golden; Agni is invoked in the Vedas as the god with the golden beard and golden teeth. Fire and the "red gold” are associated ideas

* Quarterly Rev., July, 1863, p. 222.

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