I shall here end the enumeration of these customs, which are all manifestly symbolical of capture. We still find the trace of it even in the Brittany of to-day, where the representative of the husband, the bazvalan, and the parents of the fiancée sing, alternately, strophes of a marriage song, in which the one asks and the others refuse the bride, offering in her stead either a younger sister, or the mother or grand-*mother.[1] Our inquiry is terminated; it remains now to ask what is the meaning of this ceremonial so widely spread in all ages and in all countries. III. Signification of the Ceremonial of Capture.
The author of an interesting book on primitive marriage, Mr. McLennan, and after him a great number of sociologists, have concluded that in savage societies sexual unions or associations have been generally effected by the violent capture of the woman, that by degrees these captures have become friendly ones, and have at length ended in a peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial form.
It is quite possible to have been thus in a certain number of countries; but we must beware of seeing in this a necessary and general evolution. Surely savage hordes and tribes naturally carry off the women and girls of their neighbours and enemies, the little groups with whom they are incessantly struggling for existence. They seize their women as they do everything else, and impose on the captives the unenviable rôle of slaves-of-all-work. Given the brutality of primitive man, the fate of the captured woman is necessarily of the hardest, and it is natural that the woman of the tribe should not solicit it. Thus, with or without reason, the Australian fells to the ground his captured wife, pierces her limbs with his javelin, etc. A stranger, a prisoner, violently brought into a society where she cannot count on a single friend, will evidently be more resigned to this bad treatment, and can nearly always be made to submit to it without resistance. But we must not accept this as a sufficient explanation of exogamy. We have
- ↑ La Villemarqué, Barzas Breis.
